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Q P O 9—1465 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF 

THE UNITED STATES 

FROM COLONIES TO A WORLD POWER 



THE DEVELOPMENT 

OF 

THE UNITED STATES 

FROM COLONIES TO A WORLD POWER 

By 
MAX FARRAND 

Professor of History in Yale University 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



EASTK "^H 






COPYRIGHT, I918, BY MAX FARRAND 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October jgi8 



By Tr«n«fef 

D. C. Public Library 

MAP 2 5 193§ 



644731 






EH 



TO 

THE ALLIES 

In the Hope of a Better 
Understanding 



PREFACE 

For over thirty years a new spirit has been 
gradually making its way into the study and 
interpretation of American history and taking 
other than political and military events into 
consideration. After the appearance of Bryce's 
American Commonwealth (1888), when institut- 
ing a comparison of this work with de Tocque- 
ville's, Emile Boutmy wrote: "En un mot les 
Etats-Unis sont avant tout une societe econo- 
mique; ils ne sont qu'^ titre secondaire une 
societe historique et politique." McMaster's 
History of the People of the United States 
(1883) and Roosevelt's Winning of the West 
(1889) were indicative of the new history, 
while the greatest influence upon recent study 
has been exerted by Professor Frederick J. 
Turner through his classes and in his writings. 
Of the latter none has been more important 
than "The Influence of the Frontier in Ameri- 
can History," which appeared in the Annual 
Report of the American Historical Association 
for 1893. 

When the traditional, or conventional, point 
of view is once departed from, the most con- 
spicuous, as well as the most significant, feature 

vii 



PREFACE 

of American history becomes the expansion of 
a few thousand colonists, scattered along the 
Atlantic coast in the early seventeenth century, 
into a population of over one hundred millions, 
occupying the whole central portion of the 
North American continent and holding many 
outlying possessions. These people have devel- 
oped distinctive traits and institutions that 
have become known as American, and if they 
do not constitute a nation they are at least citi- 
zens of a single great federal state, the United 
States of America. The original colonists were 
the subjects of European monarchs, and they 
have been joined by millions of people of all 
races and nationalities, mainly from monar- 
chical states, yet they established and have 
maintained not the purest but the greatest 
democracy the world has known. From humble 
beginnings they have risen to a commanding 
position in the realm of industry and finance, 
and they have become one of the leading powers 
of the world. 

The new history attempts to explain these 
things, and to that end many studies have been 
made and a large number of monographs pro- 
duced, which are known to the special student 
but not to the general public. A new Interpre- 
tation of American history has arisen which, 
at least to the prejudiced eyes of the present 
generation, offers a better understanding of the 
viii 



PREFACE 

development of the United States, and should 
be of especial value to those whose interest in 
American history has been recently stimulated. 
In the hope of rendering a service to them this 
little book has been written. No one appreci- 
ates better than the author the difficulty of 
trying to compress the history of the United 
States into a small compass, but the appeal was 
too strong to be resisted, and he only hopes 
that his sins of omission are greater than those 
of commission. He has tried to state things 
truly, but even if he had succeeded he realizes 
that it would only be a part of the truth, for 
after all this is not intended to be comprehen- 
sive, it is only a sketch or rather an attempt to 
point out some of the things which help to ex- 
plain how Americans have come to be what 
they are to-day. 

As is the case with every historical study, 
and peculiarly so with one of this sort, the per- 
sonal element of selection and emphasis has 
been the controlling factor. The work is in a 
sense a compilation, for the author has drawn 
freely upon books and men for his ideas and for 
the expression of them, and even the biblio- 
graphy is a personal one, chosen largely from 
the books in his own library. He has tried to 
acknowledge the source of each extract, and 
wherever possible it has been done, but in 
default of that he would express here his grati- 

ix 



PREFACE 

tude to all from whom he has received assist- 
ance. He recognizes a peculiar obligation to 
Professor Turner, who, by his writings and even 
more by the generous sharing of his studies, 
brought the author to a realizing sense of the 
significance of the new point of view and has 
since assisted him in many ways. He is also 
under special obligations to President Arthur 
T. Hadley of Yale and to his former colleague 
the late Professor Guy S. Callender for stimu- 
lating suggestions obtained in friendly inter- 
course as well as from their books. He is grate- 
ful to his colleagues in American history Pro- 
fessor Charles M. Andrews and Professor Allen 
Johnson, who have both aided and encouraged 
him. The former rendered a special service 
which is recognized, though inadequately, in 
the bibliographical note at the end of Chapter 
I, and the latter read the manuscript of the 
first ten chapters and made helpful criticisms. 
Finally his thanks are due to his secretary, 
Miss Helen E. Williams, for her patient and 
untiring assistance. 

M. F. 

August 27, 1918. 



CONTENTS 

I. Colonization i 

II. Independence 33 

III. The United States 53 

IV. The New Government .... 77 
V. Liberal Government 98 

VI. The New America 125 

VII. Democracy 146 

VIII. The Jacksonian Era 166 

IX. Manifest Destiny 192 

X. Slavery and the Civil War . , . 212 

XL Reconstruction and Adjustment . .232 

XII. The Growth of the West .... 250 

XIII. A Nation at Work ..... 261 

XIV. Business and Politics .... 277 
XV. The Second Generation .... 295 

XVI. The United States as a World Power 320 
Index 341 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

FROM COLONIES TO A WORLD POWER 
CHAPTER I 

COLONIZATION 

Because it was regarded as the beginning of 
all things every rightly constructed history of 
the United States used to commence with the 
discovery of the New World by Columbus in 
1492. Recent writers, however, without mean- 
ing to detract from the glory or the achieve- 
ments of the Great Admiral, hasten to point 
out that America would have been discovered 
if Columbus had never sailed. They cite as 
proof of this Cabral's voyage to India in 1500 
when, in sailing for the Cape of Good Hope, 
that mariner was blown not so very far out of 
his course and touched the coast of Brazil. 
Some also refer to the tradition current among 
the descendants of old settlers in Newfound- 
land to-day, that when John Cabot sailed from 
England in 1497 he "discovered" only lands 
of which he had previously learned from Jersey 
fishermen. It is the incidental character of 
the discovery that is emphasized so cleverly in 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the assertion "that America was never sought, 
but stumbled on; that when found it was not 
wanted; that much of its exploration was due 
to a persistent effort to find a way around it." 

Spanish occupation following the voyage of 
Columbus did not amount to much for nearly 
thirty years, when the unexpected discovery 
of stores of gold in Mexico, and afterwards in 
Peru, led to extensive and permanent coloniza- 
tion in the south. Such easily acquired riches 
influenced other countries and undoubtedly 
stimulated them to share in taking possession 
of the New World, but colonization would, 
nevertheless, have come about in other ways. 
Whether or not Cabot was preceded by Jersey 
fishermen, he was promptly followed by them 
and by Portuguese and French as well, so it 
could be said that as early as 1500 St. John's 
harbor in Newfoundland was well known to 
European fishermen. 

Among the more romantic and spectacular 
happenings of the sixteenth century, the hum- 
ble industry of fishing has been too little re- 
garded, but it was of enough importance then 
to have special measures taken to encourage 
it. Protestant England, for example, found 
it desirable to reestablish Catholic fast days 
with their abstinence from meat, and to that 
end issued a whole series of ordinances and proc- 
lamations. That there should be no misunder- 



COLONIZATION 

standing, the very first of these, an ordinance 
of Edward VI in 1548, averred, "that one daye 
or one kynde of Meate of it selfe is not more 
holie more pure or more cleane then an other" ; 
but ** that due and godlye astynence ys a meane 
to vertue and to subdue mens Bodies to their 
Soule and Spirite, and consideringe also spe- 
ciallye that Fysshers and men usinge the trade 
of lyvinge by fysshinge in the Sea, may thereby 
the rather be sett on worke," abstinence from 
meat in Lent and on other specified days was 
duly ordered, and heavy penalties imposed for 
disregard of the injunction. Apparently this 
proved to be worth while, as the number of 
these days was gradually extended, and a cen- 
tury later, it is said, over one hundred and forty 
days of each year were set aside on which the 
eating of flesh was forbidden. 

In the great development of the industry 
which followed these and other efforts the New- 
foundland fisheries played an important part, 
and they were gradually leading to a more per- 
manent occupation. Stations were established ; 
the adjoining coasts were explored; and trading 
with; the natives was becoming an organized 
business. The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers 
at Plymouth in 1620 is regarded as a great his- 
toric event, but some years earlier English 
fishermen and traders had appeared on the 
coast of Maine; it seems to be certain that fur- 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

traders had agents who were living in the 
country all the year around; and so coloniza- 
tion in the north by both English and French 
inevitably would have resulted. 

All of this means that forces were 
planting ^^ work which probably would have 

produced somewhat the same re- 
sults independently of individuals or particular 
incidents. But history is concerned with what 
actually happened, and the first permanent 
English settlement was made in Virginia in 
1607. It was the work of a chartered trading 
company, and with all due allowance for other 
influences, it is safe to say that the primary 
interest of Englishmen, as well as of Euro- 
peans, in the planting of colonies was a com- 
mercial interest. In an age of expanding com- 
merce and of international rivalry for control 
of the wonderful opportunities that were open- 
ing, this was as natural as it was inevitable, 
for there was a growing appreciation of the im- 
portance of these colonial enterprises in the 
extension of dominions. Other motives came 
into play, such as patriotism and religion, for 
the rendering of a service to his country or 
to his church, while he was advancing his own 
fortunes, appealed to the man of that time as 
it does at the present. But the main purpose 
underlying this colonial development was com- 
mercial. 



COLONIZATION 

Spain and Portugal had tried monopolies of 
government-controlled commerce; but among 
the rising commercial powers chartered joint- 
stock companies were favored for distant trad- 
ing. England, Holland, France, Denmark, 
and Sweden established many such. Whether 
they are to be regarded as commercial com- 
panies or as colonizing companies depends 
upon the emphasis which is laid upon the one 
or the other phase of their activities. Under 
the auspices of these organizations and within a 
comparatively few years after Virginia, further 
English settlements were made in Bermuda, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. 
At the same time the French had established 
themselves on the St. Lawrence and in the West 
Indies, the Dutch on the Hudson, the Swedes 
on the Delaware, and the Danes on the island 
of St. Thomas. 

Another method that appealed especially 
to the British was colonization by proprietors, 
in which individuals or small boards took the 
place of the larger organizations. It was tried 
while the chartered commercial companies were 
still being formed and, seeming to offer an 
easier establishment and less trouble, it after- 
ward practically superseded colonization by 
companies. In this manner came about the 
proprieties of Barbadoes and Maryland. When 
the Dutch colony of New Netherland was 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

seized by the English in 1664, it was turned 
over, with some adjoining territory, to the 
Duke of York as a propriety. The Duke im- 
mediately gave part of it, the Jerseys, to Sir 
George Carteret and Sir John Berkeley. Other 
colonies of tliis same type were the Carolinas, 
the Bahamas, and Pennsylvania. 

TV , The whole story of British colonial 

JJCV610O'- 

ment development is to be found in the 

adaptation of the colonists to their 
environment. The significant thing, and at 
the same time the most natural thing in the 
world, was that the colonists succeeded in ways 
not expected of them. Some colonial enter- 
prises were started under delusions of easily 
acquired wealth, while all of the colonies were 
encouraged under hopes more or less false, and 
they succeeded only when the settlers, brought 
face to face with realities, adapted themselves 
to the conditions that were found. 

The first necessity with which they were 
confronted w^as that of supporting life; the 
struggle for existence was not an easy one; it 
sometimes proved too much for them. The 
failures sink out of sight, and though the ex- 
perience may have been useful and even neces- 
sary for those who survived, the record of suc- 
cess alone remains, or at any rate is of interest 
to the present. They lived — and ready sus- 
tenance was found for those who learned of 



COLONIZATION 

the Indians to use the native grains and fruits 
in addition to the abundant fish and game. 

Their next problem was to obtain some 
products that could be disposed of at a profit. 
By a process of natural selection the colonists 
found the things for which there was demand 
and they devoted themselves to the production 
of those without too great regard for British 
plans and prejudices. King James protested 
and the Government took measures against 
the growing of tobacco in Virginia. But when 
Captain John Smith, the picturesque adven- 
turer and able leader who saved the colony 
from perishing in its early days, was questioned 
by a royal commission as to why Virginia did 
not grow wheat instead of tobacco, his simple 
reply was that a man's labor in tobacco cultiva- 
tion was worth six times as much as It was in 
raising wheat. So the Southern Colonies de- 
voted themselves primarily to the growing of 
tobacco, and later they added rice and Indigo. 
The West India islands produced sugar, molas- 
ses, and rum, with a small amount of other 
commodities. In the North fishing had already 
proved Itself to be a successful Industry and 
source of profit, and to this was added lum- 
bering and a varied agriculture. Of course. In 
all of the continental colonies furs were ob- 
tained in greater or less abundance. 

In this way there came about a natural 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

grouping of the colonies according to their 
distinctive products: the bread colonies of New 
England, New York and Pennsylvania; the 
tobacco colonies of the South; the sugar col- 
onies of the West Indies; and Africa should be 
added, whence came the negroes for the plan- 
tations. The elements were present for a 
flourishing commercial empire, and that is 
what developed. By the end of the seven- 
teenth century British colonial establishments 
were over twenty in number, increasing to thirty 
in the following century, so that properly they 
should be regarded as parts of a great com- 
mercial empire stretching from Hudson Bay 
to the Caribbean, with outlying possessions 
in Asia and Africa. 

The first essential in colony plant- 
tiers ^^S is to get settlers, and by their 

success in obtaining them the Brit- 
ish proved their right to have and to hold a 
colonial empire. On the one hand were the 
colonies of which Virginia might be taken as 
the type, where for a long time they were will- 
ing to accept settlers "of any sort and on any 
terms," and where the need was so great, 
especially for labor, that compulsion was 
resorted to. On the other hand was New Eng- 
land, to which the migration was more largely 
voluntary, induced by political, religious, and 
social conditions in England. To all the colo- 

8 



COLONIZATION 

nies It was made easy for settlers to go, and 
many went on their own initiative with that 
irresistible impulse to seek a betterment of 
their fortunes or an improvement of their 
condition; in many cases, indeed, it meant to 
start life over again. For the average man no 
greater inducement could be offered than the 
opportunity to raise a crop or to obtain some 
products that could be exported and disposed 
of at a profit. 

Another great incentive was religion ; and In 
some of the colonies it was at times the great- 
est incentive of all. It was not the missionary 
zeal of the Spanish and French that drove 
them, but the opportunity to worship in one's 
own way that attracted men to tlie British colo- 
nies. This varied from the Puritans' establish- 
ment, of a state in which their own religion 
should be the one religion, to the asylums that 
were offered by Roger Williams in Rhode Island 
and William Penn In Pennsylvania, for the op- 
pressed and religious discontented of all sects, 
of all creeds, and of every race. 

T J Yet, after all, the greatest attrac- 

Land . ' 11,7 r 1 IT 

tion was probably that oi land. In 

a world whose political and social structure 

was based upon land-holding, and at a time 

when In older communities land was dlfHcult, 

if not Impossible, to obtain. It may readily be 

appreciated how dazzling the chance appeared 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

when a continent was to be given away. To 
the gentleman who wished to establish a landed 
estate, as well as to the common man whose 
desires were much more moderate, an unusual 
opportunity was offered. The Crown granted 
land lavishly to proprietors or to companies, 
and by them in turn it was freely granted to 
individuals. 

In New England, with a few exceptions, the 
land was burdened with no feudal obligations. 
In the other colonies the declaration of fealty 
or the rendering of a nominal service was of 
little consequence in comparison with the re- 
quired payment of a quit rent, no matter how 
small the amount might be. The objections 
to this form of tenure were so strenuous and 
the difficulty of collection proved so great 
that payment fell more and more into abey- 
ance, and in some cases it was abandoned. 
The tendency was all in the direction of yield- 
ing more and more complete control to the 
holders and the ultimate result was the grant- 
ing of land in full ownership. President Had- 
ley, in his Undercurreftts in American Politics, 
has pointed out that there is probably no 
greater or more significant difference between 
conditions in America and on the other side 
of the Atlantic than the acquisition of property, 
in which land is but a single item, in full owner- 
ship rather than under a feudal tenure. 

10 



COLONIZATION 

The ease with which land could be obtained 
in America brought about a complication in 
colonial economy that materially affected the 
composition of the population, and the whole 
social structure as well. Men who could take 
up land for themselves and obtain all of the 
benefits of their own labor could not be ex- 
pected or induced to work for others. Labor 
was a necessity; as it could not be secured 
voluntarily, it had to be obtained by compul- 
sion. The form it happened to take was that 
of indentured service for a term of years. 
Large numbers of the immigrants could not 
pay their passage money, and such were then 
provided for if they would pledge their services 
for a number of years after arrival in the 
colonies. It was generally found that these 
indentured servants took up land and started 
out for themselves as soon as their term of 
service had expired. Accordingly there seemed 
to be only one way left to solve the labor prob- 
lem, and that was by negro slavery. During the 
seventeenth century the number of slaves was 
relatively small, but with the failure of the 
white indentured servants and with the in- 
creasing demand for labor, negroes were 
brought in larger and larger numbers, until in 
the eighteenth century the importations were 
said to have reached to 10,000 and even to 
20,000 a year. 

II 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

America became known as the land 
^^ of opportunity and the population 

increased by leaps and bounds. 
Within the limits of the thirteen colonies, which 
later became the United States, in 1600 no 
settlers were to be found ; at the end of twenty 
years there were 2500 and in twenty years more 
some 25,000; by 1700 the population was esti- 
mated at over 250,000; and before the middle 
of the eighteenth century the numbers ran up 
to over 1,000,000. 

It was a heterogeneous mass that was thus 
assembled. Mingling with the English settlers 
from the start there had been some French, 
Germans, Swedes, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and 
others, while the Dutch had formed a separate 
and not insignificant element by themselves. 
Then, toward the close of the seventeenth 
century, and in the eighteenth century, be- 
cause of unsatisfactory conditions at home, 
Germans, Swiss, and Scotch- Irish poured into 
the colonies by tens, by hundreds, and by 
thousands. It was immigration on a scale 
proportionately greater even than the United 
States has seen in recent times. The Germans 
claim that by 1775 the people of their blood 
amounted to 225,000, or one tenth of the total 
population; and the Scotch-Irish claim 375,000, 
or about one sixth. Professor Edward Chan- 
ning, in the second volume of his scholarly 

12 



COLONIZATION 

History of the United States, has estimated that 
"About one third of the colonists in 1760 
were born outside of America." 

New England remained more largely peo- 
pled by English stock; the dominant planter 
class in the South was of similar origin, though 
negroes and white foreigners were there in 
great numbers; while the Middle Colonies 
contained the greatest admixture. Schoepf, 
a surgeon attached to some of the German 
mercenaries sent to America, could write from 
New York in 1780: — 

A promiscuous crowd of almost all nations of 
Europe, of Jews and Negroes, of all creeds and 
sects, of people who have settled here for such 
diverse reasons, and often in order to escape legal 
penalties, here congregates and ingrafts upon the 
common country of their adoption the sentiments, 
manners, and habits of life which each individual 
has brought with him. 

At about the same time Crevecceur, in his de- 
lightful Letters from an American Farmer, being 
familiar with conditions in Pennsylvania and 
New York, answered his own question, "What 
is an American?", by saying: — 

They are a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, 
French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. From this 
promiscuous breed, that race now called Americans 
have arisen. ... I could point out to you a family 
whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose wife 
was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, 
and whose present four sons have now four wives 
of different nations. 

13 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

People who were going away from their own 
countries to settle in the New World, people 
who wished to leave home because they were 
unable to live under existing institutions, were 
usually allowed to do so without great diffi- 
culty. Reformers or even progressive members 
of a community may be estimable persons, but 
they are often unpleasant neighbors. The 
French Huguenots are rightly regarded as 
among the best elements of the population in 
the countries in which they settled; yet it was 
a relief to France at the time to have them go. 
The Scotch- Irish were competing dangerously 
with British industries, and advantage was 
taken of the difference in religious opinion to 
subject them, as Presbyterians, to the require- 
ments of the Test Act which had been prima- 
rily intended for the subjection of Catholics. 
The Swiss Mennonites, because of their form 
of worship and their communistic tendencies, 
and also because of their refusal to bear arms, 
were considered a source of danger to both 
church and state. Governments could not sit 
idly by and allow these people, who were in 
general of an industrious class, to leave the 
country as freely as they chose. Laws were 
passed and proclamations were issued against 
emigration, but effective measures of enforce- 
ment were seldom taken. It is evident that 
underneath there was more or less of a feeling 

14 



COLONIZATION 

that after all it was "good riddance to bad 
rubbish." 

The Americans were a nation of immigrants, 
a composite people, and the process of fusion 
was slow. While it was taking place thought 
and action were dominated by a relatively 
small upper class which was in general closely 
allied to the English by blood. This class fixed 
upon Americans the tradition of Anglo-Saxon 
origin which was probably not true for the 
majority of the people after the middle of the 
eighteenth century. Still the colonies were of 
English foundation; the English language was 
the dominant language; and the institutions 
were fundamentally British. This was well 
illustrated in the matter of government. 

The New Englanders, in accord- 
ment ance with their training and tradi- 

tions, but also in keeping with their 
environment, organized themselves into closely 
compact communities with a form of local life 
characteristic of the towns of Old England. 
While this implied a large amount of self- 
government, it did not mean popular control. 
For a time, in several of the colonies, the church 
and civil communities were practically identical 
and membership in the church was frequently 
required for the exercise of civil rights. This 
might be regarded as a restriction of political 
privileges, but it should rather be taken as an 

15 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

assurance of the equality of all men in the civil 
community just as they were equal before God 
in the church covenant. Yet theoretical con- 
siderations gave way before existing condi- 
tions; the aristocratic traditions of Old Eng- 
land were reproduced in America. Politically 
as well as socially the control of affairs re- 
mained largely in the hands of the upper class. 

Local conditions in Virginia were responsi- 
ble for the development in that colony of scat- 
tered private plantations with a small group of 
aristocratic owners in control of affairs, and a 
larger body of an inferior, and to a great extent 
dependent, class. It was, therefore, inevitable 
that the local government should take on a form 
of looser political organization than in New 
England. It accordingly followed the larger 
English divisions of hundreds and counties. 

Other colonies showed variations and com- 
binations of these types. 

If the colonies are viewed in the light of their 
foundation as commercial enterprises, many 
things otherwise obscure seem relatively clear 
and simple. A joint-stock company would have 
a board of directors, the council, in London or 
wherever the company originated. The neces- 
sary authority In the colonies would naturally 
be exercised by a local or resident director, the 
governor, with an advisory board or committee, 
the council. As most of these enterprises did 

I6 



COLONIZATION 

not prove to be successful business ventures, 
changes were made; and various experiments 
were tried in the effort to make them more 
profitable. For example, it was quickly appre- 
ciated that individual property-holding offered 
a great Incentive to effort; accordingly mutual 
profit-sharing, which had been attempted In 
the first colonies, was given up. The men upon 
the ground would know local conditions better; 
their experience would be helpful and their 
advice valuable; accordingly in Virginia each 
plantation or group of inhabitants was asked 
to send two delegates to an assembly — and 
representative government In America was 
begun. In Massachusetts advantage was taken 
of the fact that there was no stipulation In the 
charter that the meetings of the stockholders 
should be held in England. Accordingly, by 
taking the charter with them the settlers who 
were stockholders were able to hold meetings 
in the colony itself and so to obtain almost 
complete control of their own affairs. 

The whole tendency was toward a greater 
and greater amount of self-government being 
allowed because It seemed to meet conditions 
better and because the colonies flourished under 
that arrangement. The colonies being of Brit- 
ish foundation, the colonists being British 
subjects, and being granted all the rights and 
privileges of that status, It was natural that 

17 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the institutions which developed should be es- 
sentially British. In practically every colony, 
therefore, the government developed on the 
British model. This consisted of a governor 
and council appointed by the Crown, as well as 
a whole set of officials holding their positions 
directly or indirectly by royal appointment, 
an assembly elected by the property-owners 
which had fairly extensive powers of legislation 
and taxation, and a series of judicial courts 
modeled on those of England. 

Nor was this local self-government incompat- 
ible with the fact that before the end of the 
seventeenth century the Crown followed a 
fairly consistent policy of bringing all the colo- 
nies so far as possible under its own imme- 
diate control. The corporate colonies were 
continually giving trouble; the proprieties were 
only slightly better; simplicity and uniformity 
demanded royal administration. While it 
would be misleading to say that the Govern- 
ment never stopped until this purpose had 
been accomplished, it is true that with a few 
lapses the Government persisted in its purpose 
until out of some thirty establishments all but 
four eventually became royal or Crown colonies. 

. . Although colonial governments and 

institutions were essentially British, 

and though their development in the main fol- 

i8 



COLONIZATION 

lowed on British lines, even governmental 
changes in England being reflected in America, 
yet in the adaptation to new conditions many 
and considerable modifications came about. 
Some of the most obvious as well as the most 
significant changes arose out of the mere 
growth of the colonies. A population that in- 
creased from 275,000 in 1700 to 1,200,000 in 
1750 meant an expansion of settlement so rapid 
as to be phenomenal. While this was possible 
because of a liberal land policy, the expansion 
itself was partly responsible for that liberality. 
If the land were not freely given the impatient 
colonists seized it. James Logan, Penn's agent, 
complained in 1725 that there were "as many 
as one hundred thousand acres of land pos- 
sessed by persons who resolutely set down and 
improve it without any right to it." ^ 

A liberal land policy was a large factor in the 
establishment of property rights in America 
and this has been spoken of as one of the most 
significant features of American development; 
but there were social and political results from 
expansion that were of almost equal impor- 
tance. Professor Frederick J. Turner, in his 
remarkable and telling articles on the West, 
beginning with The Significance of the Frontier 

^ * With so great a demand for land there came an inevitable 
rise in land values and investment and speculation followed. 
In Philadelphia, in 1768, it was said that "every great fortune 
made here within these fifty years has been by land." 

19 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

in American History, has pointed out that 
American expansion has been a process of 
colonization, and that the characteristic feature 
of American social development has resulted 
from starting life over again on the frontier. 
With the expansion of population and the de- 
velopment of new frontiers, came a constant 
recurrence of the process and a constant re- 
organization of social institutions. Being in 
operation from the earliest times this process 
slowly but surely was causing a divergence. 
The farther west the population went the 
farther removed were European influences, 
until out of the action and interaction of fron- 
tier and coast, out of the interplay of sections 
and of classes, there came something different, 
a development of life and institutions which 
has become known as American. 

Where economic conditions were more nearly 
equal and where opportunities were open to 
all, social and political privileges could not be 
maintained on the same strict lines as in Eng- 
land. Many ambitious and discontented people 
in the settled portions of the colonies went of 
their own accord out to the undeveloped sec- 
tions of the country and took up land. Other 
undesirable elements such as superfluous for- 
eigners were pushed out to the frontier. Just 
as the American colonists in general were re- 
garded by Englishmen and Europeans as of a 

20 



COLONIZATION 

somewhat inferior grade, so the frontiersmen 
were looked down upon by the coast settlers 
with something of indifference if not of con- 
tempt. The ruling classes in the colonies were 
running affairs in their own interests and with- 
out too great regard to the needs of others. 
They were fearful of the effect upon their hold 
of the social and political organization if this 
dissatisfied, rough, inferior element of the popu- 
lation should ever come into power. They 
accordingly took precautions to keep the reins 
of government in their own hands. The fron- 
tiersmen had many things to complain of, but 
their culminating grievance was that they did 
not have the share in the government to which 
they claimed their numbers entitled them, for 
then they would have been in a position to 
remedy the situation for themselves. Dissat- 
isfaction existed everywhere, and just as soon 
as the discontented element was sufficiently 
strong to make trouble, trouble was bound to 
result. Continued friction, revolt, and even 
bloodshed forced concessions. Results were 
slow in coming, but ultimately the frontiers- 
men, the newcomers, the inferiors placed 
themselves on a footing of equality, at least 
so far as formal recognition was concerned, 
with the older, superior class. 



21 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

While England was yielding to her 
Commerce , . ^ j i r r j 

and trade colonies a great deal oi Ireedom in 

the matter of local government, she 
was passing many and minute regulations af- 
fecting the commerce and internal industrial 
development of those same colonies ; and in this 
she was carrying out a fairly consistent policy 
and had done so from early times. 

When the struggle with Spain in the sixteenth 
century, actuated by religious zeal as well as 
by lust for riches, was succeeded in the seven- 
teenth century by a commercial rivalry with 
the Dutch, the control of the carrying trade 
became all-important. The famous series of 
Navigation Acts, beginning in 1651, unfolded 
a policy that was frankly intended to develop 
English shipping as the best support of the 
navy. Another closely related feature of the 
commercial policy developed in these and other 
acts was to promote in the colonies the produc- 
tion of naval stores for which England was 
dangerously dependent upon foreign countries 
with whom she might at any moment go to 
war. The colonies were also to provide raw 
materials which were not procurable at home, 
and they were to furnish a market for English 
manufactures, the exchange of commodities to 
be so regulated that the balance of trade would 
be in favor of the mother country. 

In the maintenance of this commercial policy 

22 



COLONIZATION 

it was inevitable that the Government ' com- 
pass many laws, some of which were wise tab- 
some doubtless unwise, and many exceedin^i-o 
irritating to the parties restrained by them. 
These annoying restrictions, however, were 
only parts or incidents in the organization of 
a great commercial empire. In this empire the 
interests of the mother country were paramount 
and those of the colonies subordinate, it is true ; 
and where the two came into conflict the col- 
onies must of course yield; but in general the 
interests of the two were not antagonistic, 
though at times they were divergent. England 
and her colonies were partners in a commercial 
organization. The prosperity of the one was 
dependent upon the prosperity of the other. 

By their very location, with plenty of lum- 
ber and the finest of ship timbers, and under 
the stimulus which came from the fishing in- 
dustry the New Englanders were foreordained 
to take up the building of ships. Not only did 
they build them for their own use; because of 
their cheapness and excellent qualities they 
were soon building them also for others. With 
sailors trained in the best of all schools, the 
fishing fleet, it was also foreordained that New 
Englanders should turn to carrying and trad- 
ing. In all this development the requirement of 
the Navigation Acts that all ships must be 
English-owned and manned by English sailors 

23 



DLVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

^ }i great advantage, for the terms of the 
ajj^ placed colonial and English shipping on 
.0 same footing. 

The system of enumerated commodities by 
which specified articles could be shipped only 
to England worked something of a hardship, 
but compensation was made wherever possible. 
For example, in the case of tobacco, a better 
market could probably have been found on the 
Continent ; but amends were made by granting 
a monopoly of the English markets. While 
some manufacturing was done for home use, it 
did not require legislation to restrain the col- 
onists from this form of activity. In their stage 
of development they must of necessity rely very 
largely upon extractive industries. Such other 
commodities and manufactured articles as they 
could not or did not produce at home must be 
paid for out of the profits of the sales of their 
surplus products. In other words, the colonies 
were absolutely dependent upon outside mar- 
kets. 

The American continental colonies were 
carrying on their trade in a large measure 
for themselves. It was not a trade with the 
present methods of corporations, public car- 
riers, and fixed routes. Its type was that of 
the individual merchant who carried his own 
goods, which would include cases where various 
people took shares in the venture and formed 

24 



COLONIZATION 

what might be called small joint-stock com- 
panies. There were some fairly well-estab- 
lished trade routes, as to England and to 
southern France and Spain, but the bulk of the 
trade, especially among the continental colonies 
themselves and between them and the West 
Indies, was carried on in a most irregular way. 
The colonies produced a great variety of com- 
modities, and the methods of distribution were 
almost as varied as were the products. Pro- 
fessor Charles M. Andrews, in writing of the 
New England traders, each with a venture of 
only a few hundred pounds, going from colony 
to colony and to the West Indies, carrying every 
known commodity, well describes this as "a 
peddling and huckstering business." 

The colonies found the markets which they 
required to a large extent in England and in 
Europe ; in fact they traded all over the Atlan- 
tic and Mediterranean, and probably even on 
the Baltic coast. But the essential element in 
the prosperity of their trade was found in the 
West India islands. They could there dispose 
of lumber and foodstuffs to advantage; but it 
was of greater importance that a ready market 
was found for certain commodities which could 
not otherwise be sold. For example, the broken 
fish could not be offered in higher-class mar- 
kets, but were in demand in the West Indies 
as food for the slaves. Part of this West India 

25 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

trade was thus equivalent to the profitable 
sale of by-products, and assisted the colonies 
materially in maintaining the balance of trade, 
which would otherwise have gone heavily 
against them.^ 

Early in the eighteenth century New Eng- 
land colonists found in the French West India 
islands molasses and other products so cheap 
and plentiful that it is said the planters were 
accustomed to throw much of them away. 
The trade which quickly sprang up worked to 
the detriment of the British islands, whose 
planters made complaint to Parliament. The 
sugar colonies, because of the greater profits 
from them, had always been fa\'orites of the 
home Government, and the returned planters 
with their wealth exercised a peculiar social 
and political influence in England. Their appeal 
was accordingly listened to, and in 1733 the 
Molasses Act was passed which placed a pro- 

^ "The State of the Trade," as drawn up by the Boston 
merchants, recently printed by C. M. Andrews ("The Boston 
Merchants and the Non-Importation Movement," Colonial 
Society of Massachusetts, Publications, 1917, p. 167), shows 
this in most convincing fashion: "... about \ of this Bank 
Fish turns out merchantable and is sent to Spain, Portugal, and 
Italy, the net proceeds of which with the freight is remitted 
to Great Britain; the other f being such as is over-salted, sun- 
burnt, and broken, and thereby rendered unfit for any market 
in Europe is sent to the Islands in the West Indies, first to the 
English Islands, which cant consume more than -j, the remain- 
ing I is sent to the French foreign islands, in return for which 
we receive Molasses and a small proportion of ordinary sugars. 
This valuable branch of trade and nursery of seamen almost 
if not wholly depends on our trade to the foreign islands in the 
West Indies." 

26 



COLONIZATION 

hibitive duty upon trade with the French 
islands. 

In carrying on their diversified trade the 
colonists observed the regulations laid down 
by the mother country only so far as they were 
forced to. Exemptions from the requirements 
of the restrictive acts in the form of special 
licenses were oftentimes issued, and in many 
cases the laws were not rigidly enforced. So 
essential to the general prosperity of the em- 
pire was the prosperity of the New England 
trade, and so dependent was it in turn upon the 
trade with the French islands, that the Molasses 
Act was never strictly enforced. 

There is no doubt that irregular trade or 
smuggling was carried on to a fairly large 
extent ; even if it had not been tolerated by the 
British it would have been difficult to prevent 
on account of the great length of the colonial 
coast-line with its many bays and creeks which 
made careful patrol almost impossible. It has 
been said that the colonists smuggled when- 
ever it was to their interest to do so; it is also 
said that the colonies flourished by reason of 
neglect. There may be an element of truth in 
these assertions, but the larger truth is that 
the colonies were flourishing with the rest of 
the British Empire, not in spite of the restric- 
tive policy, but because they were a part of this 
great successful commercial organization. An 

27 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

important factor in colonial prosperity seems 
to have been that the lack of capital inevit- 
able in an early stage of industrial develop- 
ment was to a large extent supplied by British 
credit. Many merchants in the colonies traded 
with the British merchants whose supply of 
capital enabled them to extend the necessary 
credit for the Americans to carry on their 
trade. 

Expansion had brought the colo- 
th^ nists into contact and into conflict 
French with the Indians, which led to de- 
mands upon the home Government 
for more adequate provision for defense. Ex- 
pansion also brought them into rivalry and 
into conflict with the French and led the colo- 
nists into taking a more and more important 
part in the plans of imperial expansion. When 
William III, immediately after his accession 
to the English throne in 1689, joined the Grand 
Alliance against Louis XIV, the American 
colonists took a minor part in what they called 
"King William's War." Again they shared 
in the War of the Spanish Succession, which 
they called "Queen Anne's War" (1701- 
1714), and in the War of the Austrian Suc- 
cession ( 1 740-1 748), which they called "King 
George's War." 
This was not merely a matter of duty on the 

28 



COLONIZATION 

part of the colonists ; self-interest required their 
participation. At first they were mostly con- 
cerned about the North Atlantic fisheries, and 
aggressive actions on their part were directed 
largely to the breaking of French and to the 
establishing of British control. The question 
continued to be a big factor in the years and 
in the wars that followed, but expansion 
brought the Americans and the British as well 
to a realization of the fact that there was a 
larger question involved, and that the rivalry 
between the French and British in America 
was actually a struggle for the possession of a 
continent. Military instinct, aided by the 
more or less accidental location of their first 
settlements upon the St. Lawrence, had shown 
the French the advantage of seizing the more 
important strategic points to control the in- 
terior of the continent, and had accordingly 
led them to establish a series of forts on the 
Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Great Lakes as 
well as on the St. Lawrence. On the other 
hand the British had characteristically encour- 
aged settlement and as the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century was approaching they were or- 
ganizing colonizing companies for the purpose 
of settling the Ohio Valley. 

When the inevitable struggle In Europe was 
renewed in the Seven Years War (i 756-1 763), 
the fighting had already been going on in 

29 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

America for over a year, growing out of the 
eagerness on the part of both contestants to 
seize the headwaters of the Ohio. The British 
continental colonies contained over a million 
souls, the French less than a hundred thousand. 
The outcome was a foregone conclusion; and 
as the war had begun, so before peace was 
reached in Europe the fighting had ended in 
America with the capture of Montreal by the 
British in 1760. 

The changed character of the struggle in 
America, or at least the appreciation by the 
colonists of the importance of its issue to them, 
was shown by the fact that they no longer 
designated it as their sovereign's war, but as 
the "French and Indian War." Their self- 
interest was also shown by the fact that when 
their immediate aims seemed likely of achieve- 
ment, when the headwaters of the Ohio were 
assured to their possession, and the fisheries 
were evidently to remain under their control, 
the colonists did not hesitate to engage in 
what should really have been regarded as 
treasonable trade with the enemy. They 
supplied the French with provisions which the 
British troops could have used, and they "cyni- 
cally justified it on the ground that they were 
making money out of the enemy." 

The result of the Seven Years War is a mat- 
ter of world history. As it marked an epoch 

30 



COLONIZATION 

in British imperial development, it also marked 
an epoch in American history. The French 
lost practically all of their American colonies. 
Louisiana was given to Spain in compensation 
for Florida, which had been yielded to the Brit- 
ish in exchange for Cuba. Canada and adjoin- 
ing territories went to Great Britain, and only 
two little islands off the coast of Newfoundland 
were left to France for the use of her fishermen. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Modern historical works generally contain bibliographical 
notes upon their respective subjects, but it is often desirable to 
use something more comprehensive. For this purpose, the most 
convenient is Channing, Hart and Turner, Guide to the Study 
and Reading of American History (1912). J. N. Larned, Liter- 
ature of American History (1902) has the advantage of a crit- 
ical comment upon each title noted. More recent publications 
can be followed in Writings on American History (published 
annually). 

Among the students of American colonial history Professor 
Charles M. Andrews, of Yale University, seems to grasp with 
a constantly widening comprehension the whole colonial 
period of American history, in its external relations as well as 
in its internal development. His views have been only par- 
tially presented in printed works, among which might be noted 
as of general interest: Colonial Self-Government (1904); The 
Colonial Period (1912); an article on "Colonial Commerce" in 
the American Historical Review (1914-1915); The Fathers of 
New England (1918) and Colonial Folkways (1918). The author 
is greatly indebted to his colleague, having made free use of 
his ideas both published and unpublished, for Professor An- 
drews has been kind enough to discuss with the writer several 
of the points made in this and the following chapter, and to 
allow him to use the manuscript of a lecture delivered at the 
Lowell Institute, October, 1916, containing a brief summary of 
colonial history. 

H. L. Osgood and G. L. Beer have placed all students under 
obligations to them by their works on the American Colonies, 
and the British Colonial System, but their writings would 
hardly be considered popular. Of the printed narrative ac- 

31 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

counts probably the best is Edward Channing's in the first 
three volumes of his scholarly History of the United States 
(1905-1912). A short and readable narrative is C. L. Becker's 
Beginnings oj the American People (1915). European conditions, 
the discoveries and explorations are well described in E. B, 
Cheyney, European Background of American History (1904), 
and E. G. Bourne, Spain in America (1904). Excellent detailed 
bibliographies are to be found in all of these works. Edward 
Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation (1896) and Transit of Civiliza- 
tion from England to America (1901) are interesting and illu- 
minating. 

There is no comprehensive work on the land system in the 
colonies. Upon the population, to be recommended are: A. B. 
Faust, German Element in the United States (2 vols., 1909); 
C. K. Bolton, Scotch-Irish Pioneers (1910); and H. J. Ford, 
Scotch-Irish in America (1915). C. M. Andrews, in Colonial 
Folkways, has some excellent sections developing the com- 
posite character of the American people. The author had a 
series of articles in the New Republic for December, 1916, 
making no pretense at scholarship, but drawing an interesting 
comparison with recent immigration to the United States. 

In addition to his article on the frontier already referred to 
in the text, any study of colonial expansion must take into 
consideration F. J. Turner's "The Old West" {Proceedings 
of the Wisconsin Historical Society, 1908). 

G. S. Callender, Selections from the Economic History of the 
United States, 1765-1860 (1909), is not a book for the gen- 
eral reader, but it contains many extracts throwing light upon 
economic phases of American development and the short In- 
troductions to the different chapters are brilliant interpre- 
tations that are full of suggestion. Recent publications of 
the Carnegie Institution, though not popular in character, 
are indispensable for their subjects: V. S. Clark, History of 
Manufactures in the United States, 1 607-1 860 (1916); E. R. 
Johnson et al., History of Domestic and Foreign Commerce of the 
United States (191 5); and History of Transportation in the 
United States before i860, edited by B. H. Meyer (1917). 

The works of Francis Parkman (1865-1892), because they 
are both fascinating in interest and scholarly in character, still 
remain the standard history of the French in America and of 
the struggle between them and the English. The most recent 
accounts are William Bennett Munro, Crusaders of New 
France (1918), and George M. Wrong, The Conquest of New 
France (19 18). 



CHAPTER II 

INDEPENDENCE 

The retention of Canada while returning the 
conauered West India islands to France, and 
the acceptance of Florida from Spain in return 
for Havana, indicated how important, in com- 
parison with the West Indies, the continental 
colonies had grown in the estimation of the 
British. The immediate question was what was 
to be done with the newly acquired territories. 
It was answered by the Proclamation of 1763. 
This grouped the new territories into four 
provinces or governments, restricted, in all of 
the colonies, settlement to the east of the 
Alleghenies, and placed strict limitations upon 
those engaging in trade with the natives. 
Though tentative in character, the proclama- 
tion was intended to prevent friction with the 
Indians; it was intended for the conservation 
of the fur- trade ; but it seems also to have been 
intended to keep the colonies within reach of 
imperial authority. 

There seems to have been a growing 
DoUcv^^ realization on the part of the British 

as to the necessity of a better colo- 
nial organization and of a more effective admin- 
istration. Events and experiences of the recent 

33 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

war strengthened this into a conviction. The 
larger problem of imperial organization and 
control would probably have presented itself 
at about this time under any circumstances, but 
it was the acquisition of new territory which 
hastened the new policy. The very extent of 
the empire required a strengthening of the 
imperial bonds and a more adequate system 
of defense. It seemed only fair also that the 
financial burden thereof should be more equi- 
tably distributed. 

The Proclamation of 1763 was not popular 
in the colonies, but it was acquiesced in as a 
temporary measure, which would be modified 
in the course of time to meet colonial needs. 
The other features of the new policy were more 
objectionable. In 1764 the Sugar Act was 
passed, which was ostensibly a modification of 
the Molasses Act of 1733, but revealed new 
purposes. It frankly stated that " it is just and 
necessary that a revenue be raised in America," 
although it smoothed over that declaration by 
adding that the revenue so raised should be 
used for the protection of the colonies them- 
selves. In the earlier statute the duties were 
prohibitive and had been disregarded. In the 
new act lower duties were laid, but provision 
was made for their collection as well as for 
better enforcement of all the trade and naviga- 
tion acts. Measures in this direction had been 

34 



INDEPENDENCE 

taken during the war to prevent trade with the 
enemy. But this was in times of peace, and 
pointed ominously toward a restriction of the 
freedom which the colonists were wont to en- 
joy. Accordingly they complained bitterly that 
the measure was unwise and unjust. 

The revenue to be derived from the Sugar 
Act was relatively insignificant, and the next 
year, in spite of the protests and petitions of 
the colonists, a stamp tax was laid. The act re- 
quired the affixing of stamps to all legal and 
commercial documents in the American colo- 
nies. The revenue therefrom, like that of 1764, 
was to be used in the protection of the colonies, 
and the proceeds of both together would meet 
only a part of the expense involved. This seems 
reasonable enough, but the train of events was 
started which ended almost inevitably in the 
revolt, and in the independence, of the conti- 
nental colonies. 

_, With the large measure of self- 

quarrel government which the colonies had 
been allowed to develop, there had 
come frequent and unavoidable conflicts be- 
tween the assemblies elected by the colonists 
and the administrative officers appointed by 
the Crown. In these contests the assemblies 
were gradually getting the better of it through 
using the power of the purse, in good old Eng- 
lish fashion, granting generously when con- 

35 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

cessions were made to them and thwarting 
other measures in which their ''rights" had 
been disregarded. They were thus asserting 
and gradually establishing the principle of 
demand and supply. The levying of a tax as 
proposed in the Stamp Act was taking money 
directly from the colonists without giving them 
any voice or say in the matter. On the other 
hand the British insisted and believed that 
they were not interfering with the self-govern- 
ment of the colonies. Feeling that this legis- 
lation was for the benefit of the empire as a 
whole, Parliament naturally resented the block- 
ing of large policies by what were regarded as 
petty or local, selfish interests. 

Underneath all this was an important dif- 
ference between American and British insti- 
tutions. A candidate for election to the House 
of Commons might stand for any constituency 
and considered himself a representative of all 
the people. Owing to peculiar conditions in 
America a member of a legislative body was 
elected from the district in which he lived and 
represented primarily the interests of his own 
immediate section. Accordingly representa- 
tion meant one thing in England, and quite 
another thing in America. Believing that they 
were legislating for the interests of the empire, 
Englishmen could not understand why the colo- 
nists had any ground for complaint, as they were 

36 



INDEPENDENCE 

no more unrepresented than were the majority 
of the people in England. The Americans could 
not see how they were represented at all. 

A weakness in the colonial contention lay 
in the fact that the colonies by the very na- 
ture of their foundation and development had 
always been controlled by the acts of trade. 
One of the common incidents of those acts 
had been the laying of duties. To the principle 
of this the colonists had never objected. They 
were now bitterly opposed to the Stamp Act 
and there must be some justification for their 
opposition. This was not merely to furnish 
a plea; they had to justify their position to 
themselves. That justification was found in 
the assertion that while the British Govern- 
ment had the right to regulate matters of trade 
and commerce and might levy taxes for that 
purpose, which they called "external taxes," 
the government had no right to levy taxes for 
revenue, which were termed "internal taxes." 

It is well recognized that constitutional ar- 
guments are always found in support of any 
opinion and especially to bolster up the oppo- 
sition. That it is not unfair to regard the 
American reasoning in that light, is shown by 
simply quoting from James Madison, who later 
became the great authority on the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. Shortly after the war 
was over he admitted : — 

37 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

The line of distinction between the power of 
regulating trade and that of drawing revenue from 
it, which was once considered the barrier of our 
liberties, was found, on fair discussion, to be abso- 
lutely undefinable. 

There is, therefore, ground for saying that 
taxation without representation was an excuse 
rather than the cause of the Revolution. The 
mere enforcement of the laws of trade, accom- 
panied as it was with a few years of hard times, 
would probably have been sufficient to force 
the issue. If the colonists had reached a stage 
in their development where they seemed to 
require a greater freedom of trade than the 
British were willing to grant, they were jus- 
tified in asserting their independence; but it 
will not do to inquire too closely into the rea- 
sons which they gave in the excitement of the 
struggle. 

It must not be imagined that the colonists 
were in any sense hypocritical or insincere in 
the position which they had taken. They be- 
lieved as firmly as could be believed that they 
were fighting the battle of English liberty, 
lighting for rights of Englishmen as old as 
Magna Carta. On the other hand Parliament 
was legally and constitutionally in the right. 
Whether Parliament acted in a wise or states- 
manlike way is another matter. Tact rather 
than firmness was needed, and diplomacy rather 

38 



INDEPENDENCE 

than obstinacy. Ignorance was a fault of both 
parties with, perhaps, the greater responsibility 
therefor resting upon the home Government. 
Like so many quarrels, this was one in which 
neither party understood the other's side of the 
question. So divergent were the points of view, 
that to try and reconcile them may have been 
hopeless, but it does seem that the American 
colonists, if they had been handled with tact, 
could have been led to meet their share of the 
expenses of government, although it might have 
been accomplished only at too great a sacrifice 
of imperial authority. It is an interesting 
speculation, however, that the United States 
of British America may not have been an 
impossibility. 

It was a condition rather than any one cause 
that brought on the Revolution, and various 
forces were working to produce that condition. 
Considering how large a part religious freedom 
had had in American colonization, and how 
many of the colonists were dissenters, it may 
readily be appreciated how a movement for 
the establishment of an American episcopate 
would be regarded. This was the inauspicious 
moment that was chosen to agitate the subject 
anew and with unusual vigor. It was of course 
construed to be an effort on the part of the 
Crown not merely to control the religion of the 
people, but to control the clergymen, who were 

39 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

generally leaders in their communities and 
who had preached and spread ideals of liberty 
among their parishioners. 

The personal element is always a difficult one 
to estimate, and yet such considerations have 
to be taken into account. All the conflicting 
passions that are aroused by hopes, ambitions, 
and interests; all the rivalries, jealousies, and 
suspicions — these are the forces which deter- 
mine the attitude and the action of many men. 
A trivial illustration throws a flood of light 
upon this: When a sufficient number of years 
had elapsed to make such a confession possi- 
ble, an American admitted that his grievance 
against England had been that he was "cut 
out with his sweetheart by a 'red coat gallant,' 
a marine officer with Lord Dunmore." Another, 
hearing this, said that a tax on tea was sup- 
posed to have caused the Revolution, but he 
had reason to believe that it was the Boston 
girls caring more for the British officers than 
they did for the Americans. 
Declara- Other factors came into play, and 
tion of opinions will necessarily differ as 

Independ- to the relative importance of each. 
^^^® It is merely a question of emphasis. 

Conditions being what they were, once started 
the five-act drama moved inexorably to its 
conclusion: Misunderstanding; Unwise De- 
mands; Disobedience; Punishment; Rebellion. 

40 



INDEPENDENCE ^ 

Determined and united opposition brought 
about the repeal of the Stamp Act, but accom- 
panied by a formal declaration of Parliament's 
right to tax, and when the raising of a colonial 
revenue was next attempted by the Townshend 
Acts In 1767, troops were unwisely sent over. 
Concerted action of the colonists again ren- 
dered the acts a failure, at least so far as rev- 
enue was concerned, and they were accordingly 
repealed; but there was a tax left upon tea 
and, as it was understood in the colonies to 
serve as an example, a boycott of that beverage 
became widespread and popular. Then, too, 
the presence of the troops in Boston led to 
constant bickering, until finally, in a brawl 
which developed into a riot, five citizens were 
killed, and Americans promptly magnified 
the incident Into the "Boston massacre." 

The colonists were now so excited that 
everything was misunderstood. In 1772 the 
East India Company, being In sore financial 
straits, took advantage of concessions by Par- 
liament to offer bargain sales of tea in the 
colonies. The colonists took this as an effort 
to bribe them Into paying a tax. In practically 
all the colonies the cargoes of tea were kept 
from sale, by force of public opinion If possi- 
ble, by threats if necessary, and sometimes by 
violence. In Boston, where Governor Hutch- 
inson had insisted upon having the tea landed, 

41 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

a mob of disguised men dumped the tea into the 
harbor. The fat was in the fire and the flames 
spread rapidly. Parliament could not overlook 
such flagrant disobedience and acts for the pun- 
ishment of Boston were quickly adopted. The 
other colonies rallied to the support of Massa- 
chusetts; united action strengthened resistance; 
and the time for reconciliation had passed. 

The Quebec Act, for the government and 
control of the recently acquired French prov- 
inces, happened to be passed at the same time 
that these extreme measures were taken for the 
punishment of Boston and Massachusetts in 
1774. Harmless enough in itself, because of 
the company it was in every evil was ascribed to 
it. In accordance with treaty guarantees one 
of its provisions permitted the Roman Catholic 
inhabitants to worship after the forms they 
had been accustomed to. This was denounced 
as the beginning of an attempt to establish Pop- 
ery and the dominion of the Roman Church 
over the colonies; in the clerical language of 
the time it was said that it "must have caused 
a Jubilee in Hell!" It is interesting to notice 
that one of Parliament's last attempts to com- 
pel submission was an act of 1775 cutting off 
the New England fisheries. Apparently it was 
felt to be as severe a punishment as could be 
inflicted. 

When unity of action on the part of the 

42 



INDEPENDENCE 

colonists became essential, accustomed as they 
were to representative self-government, and 
being adaptable by nature and by training, 
they readily found a way. They first estab- 
lished committees of correspondence for pur- 
poses of information and the interchange of 
ideas. Ultimately they came together in con- 
gresses of delegates from all the colonies. It 
was with apparent reluctance that they pre- 
pared to take the irrevocable step. But what- 
ever may have been their misgivings, when 
the time was ripe the Continental Congress 
adopted the resolution "that these United 
Colonies are, and of a right ought to be, free 
and independent States." This later was 
elaborated into the formal Declaration of 
Independence, and the Fourth of July became 
and has remained the great national holiday. 
There seems to have been a dawning con- 
sciousness in the minds of some of the more 
thoughtful men in the colonies that it was 
impossible to deny the right of Parliament to 
legislate and even to tax as it might see fit. 
Accordingly, as in the Revolution of 1688, 
where justification was found in the assertion 
by the House of Commons, that James II had 
broken "the original contract between king 
and people," so Locke's theories were also 
resorted to by the colonies to justify the breach 
with the mother country. Relying on the same 

43 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

contract theory of the origin of government, it 
was asserted that after their arrival in this 
country, the colonists had, of their own accord, 
re-adopted the system of laws under which they 
had hitherto lived in the mother country, 
and that they were subjects of the British king 
because they had freely accepted him, and not 
because he was the chief magistrate of Great 
Britain. 

Such was the fundamental principle under- 
lying the Declaration of Independence as it was 
formulated by Thomas Jefferson. An instru- 
ment that was based upon such a patent mis- 
conception of historical facts must be regarded 
as somewhat in the nature of a declaration of 
principles by a political party. Yet because 
it was adapted to the necessities of an aroused 
and angry people, and because of the way in 
which it met the aspirations of the moment, it 
was a great document and a notable achieve- 
ment. Nothing else could have served the 
purpose so well. Its practical charges appealed 
to the New Englanders; its theories appealed 
to the Virginia planters ; and it obtained very 
general support. 

This does not mean that the Revo- 
lution " lotion was the work of a united 
people, nor that it represented a 
great popular uprising. It was inaugurated 
and carried through by a relatively small class. 

44 



INDEPENDENCE 

Such a careful student as Dr. Samuel Eliot 
Morison recently estimated that out of a pop- 
ulation of two and a half million, less than one 
third may have actively supported the Amer- 
ican cause ; over one half remained neutral ; and 
at least 250,000 remained loyal to the British 
Crown. 

In the absence of any general popular sup- 
port, and with a government utterly incapa- 
ble of compelling military service, it was nec- 
essary to rely upon volunteer soldiers and an 
inadequate local militia system. It was never 
possible, therefore, to keep a satisfactory army 
in the field. The Americans were fortunate in 
their commander-in-chief, George Washington. 
Better as a strategist than as a tactician, yet 
first-class as neither, he cannot be regarded 
as a great general. Hampered by the distrust 
and jealousy, as well as by the inability, of 
other officers, restricted by lack of soldiers, 
and weakened by the inefficient support from 
Congress, Washington's greatness as a leader 
shines all the more conspicuously. 

Considering the weakness of the American 
forces it seems as though the rebellion should 
have been easily and quickly crushed. The 
failure to do so has been attributed to the 
half-hearted prosecution of the war by the 
British, to the mediocrity of their officers, to 
the use of mercenary troops, or to the ineffi- 

45 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ciency in supplying food, clothing, and ammu- 
nition. There may be something of truth in 
each of these criticisms, but the fact remains 
that considering the nature of the country and 
the means of transportation, it was difficult, if 
not impossible, "relentlessly to follow up the 
main body of the American army until it was 
captured or dispersed." 

Even if the British had been successful in 
such an effort it is doubtful if the colonies could 
ever have been wholly subdued. Guerrilla 
warfare and irregular resistance might have 
been carried on almost indefinitely. On the 
whole the British were getting much the better 
of the struggle, and if, as was feared in America, 
the war had been brought to an end in 1780, 
by the intervention of European powers, a 
large part of the territory of the revolting col- 
onies would have been in British hands. Ap- 
parently they were counting upon the colonists 
becoming tired of continuing the rebellion. 
But time was a factor working in favor of the 
Americans, rather than of the British. 

It was under such conditions that the great- 
ness of Washington as a leader was shown. 
In spite of discouragements and lack of sup- 
port, with superhuman patience and an utter 
disregard of self-interest, he maintained the 
struggle, sometimes it appeared by the sheer 
strength of his will alone. By steadfastness of 

46 



INDEPENDENCE 

purpose, he rallied about him such elements 
as could be induced to follow him and kept 
up what frequently seemed to be a hopeless 
resistance. Whether or not he would have been 
finally successful in convincing the British that 
the fighting would be continued indefinitely, 
and that the subjection of the colonies could 
only be secured at too great a cost, is a matter 
of speculation only. The Americans won the 
Revolution with the support of the French. 
This support was not given with entirely altru- 
istic motives. Many adventurous spirits and 
soldiers of fortune found the opportunity they 
were seeking in the American army. Benjamin 
Franklin's personality and picturesque appear- 
ance captured the Parisian imagination, and 
helped to render the American cause a popular 
one. The main purpose, however, of the French 
was to reestablish France in the position of 
supremacy which she had held a generation 
before, and in this a weakening of the British 
Empire would be of advantage. 

Secret and irregular assistance in money and 
supplies had been given from the start by both 
France and Spain, because of their antagonism 
to Great Britain, but such a situation could 
not continue indefinitely. When the Ameri- 
cans, partly through the mismanagement of a 
British plan of campaign and largely through 
the uprising of the frontiersmen in New York 

47 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

and Vermont, had succeeded in forcing the 
surrender of General Burgoyne and his army at 
Saratoga in 1777, the French came out openly 
on the side of the revolting colonies. The next 
year they entered into a formal alliance with 
the United States. The Spanish could not be 
persuaded to take the same stand. In 1779 
they declared war against Great Britain, but 
without recognizing or joining the Americans. 
The moral support of the French alliance 
was of great consequence, but the material 
assistance which they gave was of even more. 
As events turned out, the cooperation of the 
French might be regarded as the determining 
factor, because their fleet and troops made it 
possible to compel the surrender of Cornwallis 
at Yorktown in 1781. While a severe blow to 
the British, this was not disastrous from a 
military point of view. It was, however, deci- 
sive, because the British could not afford to 
carry on the war any longer. When the news 
reached England, on motion of General Con- 
way the House of Commons resolved that it 
would "consider as enemies to his Majesty 
and this country all those . . . attempting the 
further prosecution of offensive war on the 
continent of North America, to the purpose of 
reducing the revolted colonies to obedience by 
force." Negotiations for peace were then seri- 
ously undertaken. 

48 



INDEPENDENCE 

The settlement of the terms of peace was 
not a simple matter because there were so 
many Interests Involved. In so far as Ameri- 
can affairs were concerned the greatest diffi- 
culty lay in Spain's designs on the western 
country. Having been given Louisiana by 
France in 1763, and having taken the Florldas 
in 1780, Spain wanted the region between the 
Alleghenies and the Mississippi River, so as to 
control the entire M Isslssippi Valley. France was 
under obligations to Spain for entering the war 
and, not having been able to obtain for her the 
promised Gibraltar, felt the necessity of sup- 
porting her other demands. Any French obli- 
gations to the United States were cancelled by 
the establishment of the latter's independence. 

The American commissioners had been in- 
structed to do nothing without the knowledge 
and approval of France, Fortunately for the 
United States they were broad-minded men, 
and when they perceived the drift of affairs, 
they disregarded instructions and came to 
terms directly with Great Britain. Difficulties 
over such questions as the payment of British 
creditors and the indemnification of Loyalists 
were as nothing in comparison with the previ- 
ous obstacle of Spain's desires, and were ulti- 
mately adjusted. The main points in the 
treaty, which was finally ratified In 1783, were 
the recognition of the independence of the 

49 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

United States and the establishment of her 
territorial limits from the Atlantic to the Mis- 
sissippi and from Canada on the north to 
Florida on the south. 

There is a very natural tendency on the 
part of Americans to glorify the Revolution, 
together with every one and every thing con- 
nected with it. The ultimate results are re- 
garded as good because they have been so 
important in the later development of the 
United States. The Revolution undoubtedly 
stimulated the spread of democracy and helped 
greatly in separating church and state, and 
whether or not such things are inherently de- 
sirable is only an academic question, for they 
are established facts in American life. Yet 
such an attitude of mind overlooks the demor- 
alizing effects of the Revolution. There was, 
of course, the usual profiteering, while specula- 
tion and extravagance, characteristic of war 
times, were probably enhanced by local con- 
ditions. In the complete demoralization of 
the country's finances there were enormous 
issues of paper money and a consequent de- 
pression of the currency. This bore heavily 
upon the more conservative propertied class, 
but offered an unusual chance for speculation. 
Fortunes were quickly made and almost as 
freely spent by people who were not accus- 
tomed to the use of money. 

50 



INDEPENDENCE 

A more sinister aspect Is found In the years 
and events preceding the establishment of 
Independence. Owing to the difficulties In re- 
gard to taxation which led up to the Revolu- 
tion, the Americans were developing an objec- 
tion to any taxation at all, or at least to any 
which was seriously felt. In their efforts to 
prevent the enforcement of laws which they 
thought unconstitutional they used irregular 
and illegal methods, and even resorted to riots 
and other forms of violence. The unusual fea- 
ture of it was that these things were justified 
by the leading citizens as being necessary and 
patriotic and therefore righteous. It was an un- 
fortunate way for a people to begin their inde- 
pendent career. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Almost enough has been written upon the American Revo- 
lution to form a library in itself. But on the whole nothing 
seems better than the summarized account in William E. H. 
Lecky's England in the Eighteenth Century, chap, xvii, pub- 
lished separately by D. Appleton & Co. (1910), as The Ameri- 
can Revolution. The best recent account is in Channing's 
History of the United States, vol. iii (1912). The most in- 
teresting narrative is that by Sir George Otto Trevelyan {The 
American Revolution, 4 vols., 1905-1913; concluded as George 
The Third and Charles Fox, 2 vols. 1912-1914). 

In addition to the general titles mentioned in the bibliog- 
raphy of Chapter I should be noticed the readable narrative 
by Carl Becker, The Eve of the Revolution (191 8). J.J. Jusse- 
rand has an interesting essay upon the French in the Revolu- 
tion in his Americans of Past and Present Days (19 16). Au- 
thoritative for its subject is C. W. Alvord, The Mississippi 
Valley in British Politics, 1763-1774 (2 vols. 1917). Good but 
scarcely more than conventional accounts of both the causes 
leading up to the Revolution and the course of the fighting may 

51 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

be found in G. E. Howard's Preliminaries of the Revolution 
(1905)! C. H. Van Tyne's The American Revolution (1905); and 
T. C. Smith's Wars between England and America (Home Uni- 
versity Library, 1914). 

If the author had been able to use it in the writing of this 
chapter, Arthur M. Schlesinger's scholarly study of The Co- 
lonial Merchants and the Revolution (1918) might have modi- 
fied the expression of some of his ideas, though without materi- 
ally changing his point of view. 



CHAPTER III 

THE UNITED STATES 

Long experience in managing their own affairs 
had grown into what might be called a habit 
of self-government, and the Americans reaped 
large benefits therefrom when the machinery 
of government was thrown out of gear by the 
Revolution. During the troubled years before 
the final breach, whenever the established order 
was interrupted, the colonists took things into 
their own hands. Usually an extra-legal body 
assumed control, and maintained not only the 
forms but the actual working of a government. 
The resolutions adopted and the actions taken 
by such bodies, although without the force of 
law, were generally recognized and obeyed by 
their constituents. Then, when independence 
was declared, each state formed a government 
of its own; not always immediately, where the 
old government answered the purpose, but in 
the course of three or four years. Certain 
phases of the evolution of the state govern- 
ments are as interesting as they are important. 

„^ ^ Practically all of the colonies had 

State con- . . i r . 

stitutions come mto existence under tormal 

charter grants. In some cases the 

charter had remained the ultimate authority 

53 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

as to the rights and privileges which had been 
given. The colonists, therefore, had been accus- 
tomed to appeal to a definite and fixed instru- 
ment. Of equal and perhaps greater influence 
was the prevailing belief that government was 
founded by a compact; if the compact were 
written it ought to be so much the stronger. 
This theory of the origin of government was 
strengthened by the existence in the religious 
sphere of the church covenants. It was even 
changed into a conviction by the conditions in 
America; such compacts had actually been 
formed, as on board the Mayflower, and in the 
founding of Connecticut and New Haven. Ac- 
cordingly, when the states came to set up their 
own establishments, in each case the govern- 
ment was carefully provided for in a written 
instrument, varying in length from one to 
twelve thousand words. Sometimes the con- 
stitution, as it was called, was framed and 
promulgated by the Revolutionary Congress 
of the state; sometimes by a body especially 
elected for that purpose. Only gradually did 
the idea evolve that these instruments should 
be submitted to the voters for approval. 

This first series of written constitutions has 
always attracted a great deal of attention, but 
never more than when they were first adopted. 
It was an age when men were speculating upon 
political matters, and here was an experiment 

54 



THE UNITED STATES 

in self-government that might offer a solution 
of much-discussed problems. As soon as the 
last of the states had formed its government, 
in 1780, Congress printed a small edition of the 
constitutions, which was quickly reprinted and 
received wide circulation in Great Britain and 
on the Continent as well as in the United States. 

But however interesting or valuable in polit- 
ical theory, these state constitutions were of 
more importance as practical working instru- 
ments of government, for they or their succes- 
sors are in operation to-day in all the states of 
the Union, with, of course, the modifications 
that have been found necessary through the 
experience of nearly one hundred and fifty 
years. In that capacity the most significant 
thing is that so little difference can be found 
between the government under them and what 
it had been under the colonial charters. The 
constitutions did scarcely more than continue 
the forms, the offices, and the practices of the 
colonial regime, with a few changes in name 
rather than in substance. In fact, in the case of 
Connecticut and Rhode Island, the charter gov- 
ernments were continued without any change. 

Of course, there is a vital distinction between 
a government being dependent upon the will 
of the people or of the governing class, and a 
government dependent upon the will of the 
Crown; but to the average man in the street 

55 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

there was little or no consciousness that the 
government of his state after 1776 was in any- 
way different from the government as it had 
been five or ten years before. Perhaps there 
was a feeling of contentment, because the 
government was his, but in the actual running 
of it there was little or no difference. On the 
one hand, this meant a continuation of the old 
order, with an aristocracy in control ; while, on 
the other hand, forces were at work which were 
tending toward democracy. Property qualifi- 
cations and other limitations upon both vot- 
ing and office-holding were still the order of 
the day, but the requirements were lowered. 
Practically all of the incidents of feudal tenure 
disappeared. Primogeniture was abolished in 
aristocratic Virginia, and four of the states 
declared against the entailment of estates. 

While these were all steps in the direction of 
democracy, they did not mean a sudden break 
with the past. Indeed, one of the best features 
of the Revolution was its being so little revo- 
lutionary or radical. The changes which it 
brought about were for the most part gradual 
and therefore more acceptable and more last- 
ing. A shrewd English observer, the phrenol- 
ogist, George Combe, traveling in the United 
States in 1840, wrote in his Notes : — 

The generation of 1775 was trained under a mon- 
archy, and they had the feelings and habits of Eng- 

56 



THE UNITED STATES 

Hshmen. When their independence was achieved, 
their mental condition was not instantly changed. 
Their deference for rank and for judicial and legis-^ 
lative authority, continued nearly unimpaired. 

An appreciation of that fact is indispensable 
in understanding the course of American de- 
velopment. 

_, _ In addition to the local state gov- 

Tne Con- ^ ^ r • j 

federation ernments some sort oi a union and 

central organization was necessary, 
and the Congress made up of delegates from the 
various states which had come into existence 
in 1774 as a temporary expedient was continued 
and made permanent. Its composition was 
formally determined and its powers defined 
in the Articles of Confederation. But the Arti- 
cles were not finally ratified and in operation 
until 1 78 1, and in the meantime Congress went 
calmly on its way. To be sure, it was not an 
aggressive body, although it was the only cen- 
tral organ of government. But how could it 
be aggressive? It was made up of state dele- 
gations, all of which, large and small, were 
upon an equal footing. Nominally it was 
granted extensive powers, but none of the more 
important could be exercised without the con- 
sent of nine states, which was equivalent to 
requiring a two-thirds vote; and no sort of 
obedience could be enforced as there was merely 
a declaration in the Articles that ''every State 

57 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

shall abide by the determinations of the United 
States in Congress assembled." 

The "determinations" of Congress were 
therefore little better than recommendations, 
and this was deplorably shown in the matter 
of raising money. Congress had authority 
only to determine the amounts that were 
needed and to apportion to each state its 
share. The states honored those requisitions 
exactly to the extent that each saw fit; and 
Congress had no power and no right to enforce 
payment. Under such circumstances the finan- 
cial difficulties of the government may readily 
be imagined. Unable to obtain the necessary 
amounts from the states, Congress .borrowed 
from foreign governments where it could, and 
then resorted to the unfortunate expedient 
of issuing paper money in quantities. 

From the vantage-point of the twentieth 
century, after long experience in popular gov- 
ernment, it is customary to criticize the Con- 
federation and condemn its organization as al- 
together unworkable. That is probably unfair, 
and it certainly does not represent the atti- 
tude or the opinion of the men of that time. 
The Confederation was the first essay in united 
government that the people of the newly inde- 
pendent states had made. No one claimed that 
it was perfect, but Jefferson probably expressed 
the attitude of his fellows when he wrote that 

58 



THE UNITED STATES 

"with all the imperfections of our present gov- 
ernment, it is without comparison the best ex- 
isting or that ever did exist." In another burst 
of enthusiasm Jefferson had said that a com- 
parison of American government with the gov- 
ernments of Europe "is like a comparison of 
heaven and hell. England, like the earth, may 
be allowed to take the intermediate station." 

The reason for the long delay in 
lands ratifying the Articles of Confedera- 

tion was an uncertainty as to the 
ownership of the lands west of the Allegheny 
Mountains. Most of the desirable land east of 
the mountains had been taken up before the 
middle of the eighteenth century, and expan- 
sion farther to the west had first been checked 
by the Indians and then formally prohibited, 
as we have seen, by the Proclamation of 1763. 
Settlers, however, had been permitted to make 
their way into western Pennsylvania in the 
neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and they had also 
gone south of the Ohio River, into the region 
now known as Kentucky and Tennessee, in 
sufficient numbers to obtain recognition and 
to take an important though inconspicuous 
part in the fighting of the Revolution. 

The Western country was therefore of prac- 
tical and of immediate interest. Some states 
were claiming large parts of it by virtue of 
their colonial charter grants "from sea to sea." 

59 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Other states with fixed boundaries could put 
foru-^ard no such claims and, being limited in 
their expansion, were fearful lest they should 
be overwhelmed in the future by the more 
fortunate property-owning states. Accordingly 
they refused to ratify the plan of union un- 
less the Western lands, or at least so much of 
them as were not already occupied, should be 
used for the benefit of the United States as 
a whole. Maryland and Delaware were par- 
ticularly insistent upon this point and finally 
forced the claimants to yield. Beginning in 
1780 one state after another ceded to Congress 
its claims to the territory north and west of 
the Ohio River, and the United States thereby 
came into the possession of a public domain 
estimated to amount to one or two hundred 
million acres, and supposed to be worth about 
a dollar an acre. This was an asset sufficient 
to meet the debt incurred in the war and to 
leave a balance for the running expenses of 
the Government. 

When the Treaty of Peace, in 1783, deter- 
mined that the country between the Alleghe- 
nies and the Mississippi was to belong to the 
United States and not to any foreign power, the 
pent-up population broke west of the moun- 
tains in a genuine flood. In 1779 it was said 
that there were only one hundred and seventy- 
six white men in the whole Kentucky dis- 

60 



THE . UNITED STA TES 

trlct; but by 1785 the population was esti- 
mated at from 20,000 to 30,000, and according 
to the census of 1790 there were 73,000 in 
Kentucky and 35,000 in Tennessee. The 
United States property was northwest of the 
Ohio River, and there was certain to be a 
great demand for it as soon as it was opened 
up. Congress, therefore, faced two important 
Western problems demanding solution: one 
was to determine the policy for disposing of 
its public lands; and the other was to provide 
a government for settlers upon those lands. 

The answer to the first was found in the 
Land Ordinance of 1785. As adopted by 
Congress it provided for the rectangular survey 
of the public domain into townships six miles 
square, each of which was divided into thirty- 
six sections, and the townships were to be sold, 
alternately, as a whole and by sections, at 
prices not less than one dollar an acre. The 
financial aspect is predominant, for this meant 
sale in large lots of over 20,000 acres and in 
small lots of 640 acres; but the purpose of en- 
couraging settlement was not lost sight of, and 
it was prophetic of a most striking phase of 
American development when this early law 
contained a provision that the sixteenth sec- 
tion in each township was to be reserved for 
the maintenance of public schools. The details 
are tedious, but the mechanical rectangular 

61 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

method of survey and the requirement that the 
land must be surveyed before it could be sold 
made possible a simple system of recording 
titles, rendered transfers of property easy, and 
thereby did away with endless confusion. It 
proved to be a simple and permanently excel- 
lent system which has been widely copied. 

. The problem of government was 

zation referred to a committee of which 

Thomas Jefferson was chairman, 
where he rendered a service similar to his for- 
mulation of the Declaration of Independence, 
by taking up ideas that were current in the air 
and expressing them in an acceptable form. 
The people of the United States were accus- 
tomed to self-government, and in the process 
of expansion they had seen new colonies and 
even new states come into being. Vermont, 
although not yet recognized as a member of 
the Union, had declared itself to be an inde- 
pendent state and had a government of its 
own. Kentucky was practically independent 
of Virginia. The formation of new states was 
therefore not a new conception and, in the first 
proposals with reference to ceding the Western 
country to Congress, it was suggested that 
the territory ceded should be divided up into 
states. Upon the basis of these ideas Jefferson 
framed his Ordinance of 1784. There were 
features that were not satisfactory and it was 

62 



THE UNITED STATES 

never actually put into operation, yet it alone 
made possible its more famous successor. 

In the summer of 1787 representatives of 
the Ohio Company, composed largely of New 
England Revolutionary veterans, came to Con- 
gress and proposed to purchase a million acres 
of Western land. In view of the size of the 
purchase, the price was reduced to two thirds of 
a dollar an acre. Part of this, at least, could 
be paid in Federal certificates of indebtedness, 
which were worth about twelve cents on the 
dollar, so that the actual price was reduced to 
eight or nine cents an acre. It seems to have 
been a part of the bargain that an ordinance 
of government satisfactory to the company 
should be adopted. Before the bargain could 
be completed the land sale was enlarged so as 
to grant a share in it to certain influential finan- 
cial interests in New York, where Congress was 
sitting, and certain concessions were made to 
members of Congress. The additional land 
sale was for five million acres, on practically 
the same terms. Such was the sordid origin 
of the Ordinance of 1787, which "has been per- 
haps the most notable instance of legislation 
that was ever enacted by the representatives 
of the American people." 

One clause of the ordinance prohibited slav- 
ery in the Northwest Territory, and owing to a 
combination of circumstances it has distracted 

63 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

attention from more important features, for 
the practical working of the government Is 
the significant thing, as it was with the first 
state constitutions. Details are not essential; 
the ordinance provided for an increasing meas- 
ure of self-government and ultimate admission 
into the Union on a footing of equality with the 
original states. Although differing in particu- 
lars, those were the fundamental principles of 
Jefferson's ordinance which were thus em- 
bodied in the Ordinance of 1787. 

The new states that were thus planned for 
the West were in reality colonies, but Ameri- 
can experience attached an unfortunate stigma 
to that word, and so the "territory" northwest 
of the Ohio River grew to be the generic name. 
As each new territory was formed, the Ordi- 
nance of 1787 was extended over It, and while 
in the course of one hundred and thirty years 
some provisions have been modified and details 
have been changed, the principles of the terri- 
torial system have remained the same. The 
unique feature of the system is the incorpora- 
tion of the colony Into the parent state, and 
not only has it proved to be most successful, it 
also has made this one of the best colonial sys- 
tems the world has known. The United States 
at the present time consists of forty-eight sepa- 
rate states. Aside from the original thirteen, 
only six states have come into the Union with- 

64 



THE UNITED STATES 

out having been territories, and four of these 
six had had an equivalent training. The re- 
maining twenty-nine have all passed through 
the territorial stage. The experience in self-gov- 
ernment thus acquired, an experience wisely or- 
dered to be under a form of government mod- 
eled on that of the original states and already 
found to be good, has led the people of a terri- 
tory, in every instance, when allowed to form 
their own state government, to follow the model 
which had been set for them. Similarity of 
training and experience explains the fact, so 
often the subject of comment, that all of the 
states in the Union at the present time are so 
much alike in their form of government. 

A consideration of even larger significance is 
that, if such a process of incorporation is con- 
tinued long enough, the colonies will become 
greater than the mother country and the col- 
onists will outnumber the parent stock. This 
has been the case in the United States. The 
three or four million people reported by the 
Census of 1 790 have become the hundred mil- 
lion of the present, nearly seventy per cent of 
whom live beyond the Allegheny Mountains. 
The colonists of 1787 have grown into the 
American people of to-day. 



65 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

_ . In separating from Great Britain 

trade ^^^ Americans seem never to have 

realized the full consequences of their 
act. As colonists they had been inclined to make 
much more of the restrictions that were placed 
upon them than of the benefits they enjoyed 
under British rule, and they apparently thought 
that with independence they would be free to 
trade where they pleased. As a matter of fact 
they found themselves outside of the Empire 
and automatically excluded from sharing in 
British colonial commerce. To make matters 
worse, when peace came, France annulled 
decrees which had given peculiar privileges 
to Americans, and Spain closed many of her 
ports to their shipping. Although there had 
been some necessary development of manufac- 
tures during the Revolution, the Americans 
were still engaged mainly in agriculture and 
other extractive industries, so that they were 
in the same dependent stage as formerly, where 
they had to rely upon outside markets. So far 
as trade was concerned the Americans inde- 
pendent were worse off than they had been 
under the British system. 

If it is recalled how important the West 
India trade was In colonial economy, it will be 
seen why the reopening of that trade was re- 
garded as essential to the prosperity of the 
United States. 

66 



THE UNITED STATES 

There seemed to be but one way by which 
former commercial privileges could be restored, 
and that was through retaliatory measures, 
which Congress had no power to take. Ac- 
cordingly, various amendments to the Articles 
of Confederation were proposed for the pur- 
poses of providing increased revenue and of 
giving to Congress power over commerce, but 
all of these proposals failed because amend- 
ments required the unanimous consent of the 
states and this could not be secured. 

With that wonderful adaptability which was 
becoming characteristic of them the Americans 
were adjusting themselves to the new condi- 
tions. They were practicing economy after the 
speculation and extravagance of war times; 
they were trying further to develop their manu- 
factures ; and they were seeking out new chan- 
nels of trade, as to the East Indies. It helped 
greatly that France was soon obliged to modify 
the enforcement of her colonial policy, and 
that Spain relaxed her restrictions, and that 
even the British made concessions. But while 
the situation was improving, several years 
elapsed before conditions were restored to any- 
thing like what they had been preceding the 
break with Great Britain, and, as is usually the 
case, it took a long time for the slowly recov- 
ering prosperity to be generally appreciated. 
In the meantime Americans were greatly dis- 

67 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

satisfied, and hard times in 1784 and 1785 
made them still more impatient. 

Apparently there was no doubt in their 
minds as to what was the trouble, for without 
contradiction it was officially asserted that 
"Commerce ... is the constant source of 
wealth and incentive to industry; and the 
value of our produce and our land must ever 
rise or fall in proportion to the prosperity or 
adverse state of trade." It was in the en- 
deavor to remedy the situation that delegates 
from the several states were invited to meet in 
convention at Annapolis in 1786 to "take into 
consideration the trade of the United States." 
When only a few attended, it seemed advisable 
to do nothing beyond recommending another 
convention the next year in Philadelphia to 
attack the larger problem of revising the Arti- 
cles of Confederation so as to render them 
"adequate to the exigencies of the union." 

So far this had been a voluntary 

The Fed- effort or a self-imposed task, but 
era! Con- , .1 • 1 1 /-> 1 

vention when authorized by Congress and 

approved by the states it grew into 
the Federal Convention of 1787. This was a 
small body of fifty-five at the most, and with 
scarcely more than thirty ordinarily in attend- 
ance, but it included some of the best-known 
men in the United States. When Jefferson 
heard of the first appointments, he wrote from 

68 



THE UNITED STATES 

Paris, "It really is an assembly of demi-gods." 
That may have been true of some delegates, 
but with these greater men there were also men 
of less importance and of lesser ability. There 
were politicians as well as statesmen, and there 
were some who were quite unfit for the task 
as well as some who were trained by experience 
and study. As a whole it was a fairly repre- 
sentative gathering, but because it was made 
up almost entirely from men of the upper class, 
and because of the character of its leaders, it 
was possibly of a little better type and of a 
little higher tone than would be a similar body 
at the present time. 

Although George Washington was the most 
distinguished, and in a way the most important, 
member of the convention, as was shown by his 
unanimous selection to be the presiding officer, 
the greatest credit for what was done belongs 
to James Madison, of Virginia. His was appar- 
ently the master mind preparing the plan and 
shaping the work, though of course accepting 
many modifications, which were suggested and 
sometimes forced upon him by others. He was 
supported throughout by Washington and had 
the active assistance on the floor of Governor 
Edmund Randolph and of most of the other 
members of the Virginia delegation, and of such 
men as James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris 
of Pennsylvania, General Charles Cotesworth 

69 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Pinckney and John Rutledge of South Carolina, 
and Rufus King of Massachusetts. 

The convention had been called to amend the 
Articles of Confederation, but when thoughtful 
members began to consider the defects which 
would have to be remedied, these proved to be 
so numerous that the far-sighted were con- 
vinced that a complete change in the organiza- 
tion of government was necessary. It is doubt- 
ful whether a majority of the delegates had 
ever considered such a contingency or would 
have approved of such radical action if they 
had. And so the supporters of a new form of 
government had to move carefully, in order 
not to antagonize but to win over a sufificient 
number to the support of their cause. 

The real difference between the two opinions 
in the convention was whether the legislative 
power should be vested in a congress chosen in 
proportion to population or in a congress which 
should be, as in the Confederation, representa- 
tive of the states. It was an Issue between the 
large and small states, but it was also an issue 
between an effective national government and 
the old ineffective league of states. So evenly 
were the forces divided that It meant a disrup- 
tion of the convention unless an adjustment 
could be made. After weeks of bitter discus- 
sion a compromise was agreed to by which the 
lower house of Congress was to be composed 

70 



THE UNITED STATES 

of representatives elected from the various 
states in proportion to the numbers of popula- 
tion, and the upper house was to consist of 
two senators from each state. 

Once this compromise was reached and the 
small states mollified by obtaining equal repre- 
sentation in one house, the work proceeded 
much more smoothly and easily, although 
further compromises were necessary at every 
step. To the legislature when established 
powers were given greater than those of the 
Confederation, especially in matters of taxa- 
tion and commerce, but the all-important fea- 
ture was in making it possible for the central 
government to enforce its will. Congress was 
authorized " to provide for calling forth the 
Militia to execute the Laws of the Union," 
while more significant still was a declaration 
in the final article that "This Constitution . . . 
shall be the supreme Law of the Land." Not 
a treaty, nor an agreement between states, but 
a law enacted by the highest of all lawmaking 
bodies, the people; and though its enforce- 
ment was backed by the armed power of the 
Nation, as a law it was enforceable in the 
courts. 

Although not nearly so disrupting as had 
been the question of representation, the most 
difficult problem which the convention had to 
solve was connected with the executive. The 

71 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

men of that day could think only in terms of 
monarchy, and as Americans wanted an official 
with royal power who would not be a king, the 
method of choice and tenure of office were the 
all-important considerations. After seemingly 
endless discussions and hopeless confusion, the 
opinion of the majority finally emerged in favor 
of a short term of four years, with eligibility 
to reelection. They thought that the executive 
must be Independent of the legislature, so he 
should not be chosen by it; and as they were 
afraid of a popular election, they finally com- 
promised upon a scheme which It is said came 
indirectly from the Papal College. There was 
to be a college of electors composed of members 
chosen by the legislature of each state, and each 
elector was to be free to vote for whom he 
pleased. No person could be chosen President 
who did not receive a majority of the electoral 
votes, but as there was to be no meeting of the 
electors, which would permit canvassing and 
reaching an agreement, It was expected that In 
the great majority of cases no election would 
result, and It was then provided that Congress 
should choose the President from the five men 
who had received the largest number of votes. 
Not foreseeing the concentration of votes made 
possible through political party organization, 
it was expected that the method adopted 
would probably result In the electoral college 

72 



THE UNITED STATES 

making nominations from which the final 
choice would be made by Congress.^ 

The other department of government was 
provided for in a separate Federal judiciary of 
a supreme and inferior courts with jurisdiction 
over questions arising under the Constitution 
or under the laws passed by Congress, and in 
cases affecting foreigners. Although it was no- 
where specifically stated, it was evident from 
the discussions in the convention that the more 
thoughtful delegates realized that this juris- 
diction included the right to declare an act of 
Congress null and void if it was contrary to 
the Constitution. Finally it was agreed that 
amendments to the Constitution might be 
initiated by a two-thirds vote of Congress, or 
by a special convention, and that such amend- 
ments should be in force when ratified by the 
legislatures of, or conventions in, three fourths 
of the states. In the same spirit it was agreed 
that the Constitution should be submitted to 
especially elected conventions in the several 
states, and that when ratified by nine of them, 
it should go into operation between the states 
so ratifying. 

Such was the origin of the Constitution of 
the United States, a short document of less 

' As a final compromise between the large and small states, 
it was agreed that the decision by Congress should be made 
in the House of Representatives, but with each state having 
one vote. 

73 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

than five thousand words, similar in some re- 
spects to the state constitutions and yet very 
different. It was adopted in less than a year 
by the requisite number of states, and when 
put into operation it succeeded beyond the 
dreams of its most ardent supporters. One 
reason for its success undoubtedly lay in the 
practical character of the instrument. The 
members of the Federal Convention had been 
confronted with the problem of how to make a 
government work. In accomplishing their task 
they confined themselves to correcting the de- 
fects which they had found in the old govern- 
ment under the Articles of Confederation, and 
in their search for remedies they did not go 
outside of their own experience. Making allow- 
ance for compromises and remembering that 
the state constitutions were continuations of 
colonial governments, it is possible to say that 
every provision of the Federal Constitution can 
be accounted for in American experience be- 
tween 1776 and 1787. 

Another factor making for success is to be 
found in the changed attitude of the American 
people. By the time the new government was 
started in the spring of 1789, reviving trade 
and generally improved conditions were plainly 
felt. Instead of fear and distrust breeding 
opposition, commercial confidence led the peo- 
ple of the United States to give support to the 

74 



THE UNITED STATES 

experiment of putting government on a more 
stable basis. The Constitution was floated on 
a wave of commercial prosperity. 

A serious criticism has often been made and 
more effectively in recent years than at the 
time when the question of adoption was before 
the country, to the efifect that the Constitution 
was framed by men who were interested in 
protecting property and especially in maintain- 
ing the value of government securities. This 
is undoubtedly true; the error lies in the mo- 
tives that are usually ascribed. The Consti- 
tution was framed and its adoption secured by 
the upper, ruling class, whose members were 
in general men of property and wealth and so 
were the holders of government securities. 
Self-protection and their own interests un- 
doubtedly influenced them, but the responsi- 
bility lay upon them to act as leaders, and it 
cannot be too strongly emphasized that, with 
the opportunities existing in the United States 
where practically every man could become a 
landowner, the people in general wished to have 
property rights protected. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Of the larger general histories which include this period 
that by Channing, already referred to, is the best. John Bach 
IVIcMaster, History of the People of the United States from the 
Revolution to the Civil War (8 vols., 1883-19 13) presents a 
kaleidoscopic picture of social life and conditions in connec- 
tion with political events which adds much to the understand- 

75 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ing of the period. Of the shorter histories the best recent one 
is Allen Johnson, Union and Democracy (1915), which has two 
excellent chapters on these topics. 

The best special history of the period is that by Andrew C. 
McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution (1905). 
John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History (1888), 
is interesting and is perhaps his best piece of historical writing. 

Upon the land system of the United States the most useful 
single volume is that of Payson J. Treat, The National Land 
System, 1785-1820 (1910). He has also a series of excellent 
articles in the Cyclopedia of American Government (3 vols., 
1914). 

The most interesting account of the expansion of popula- 
tion beyond the mountains is to be found in Theodore Roose- 
velt's The Winning of the West (4 vols., 1 889-1 896). As might 
be expected the aggressive side of pioneer life appealed to him, 
and that aspect he has interpreted better than any one else. 

For the formation of the Constitution all of the ordinary 
material may be found in Max Farrand, Records of the Fed- 
eral Convention (3 vols., 1910), and the author has given a sum- 
mary of the results of his studies in The Framing of the Con- 
stitution (1913). C. A. Beard, An Economic Interpretation of the 
Constitution of the United States (1913), gives some interesting 
and valuable facts regarding certain economic aspects of the 
formation of the Constitution and particularly on the sub- 
ject of investments in government securities. 

Several of the works above referred to have extensive bib- 
liographical lists and references which would be of use in mak- 
ing further studies on any of the subjects. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

Reasons have been given for the success of the 
Constitution and of the new Government, but 
in the inauguration of the latter great credit 
should also be ascribed to George Washington. 
As was expected, and as had been intimated 
even in the Federal Convention when the office 
of the executive was under discussion, there 
was no difference of opinion among the electors, 
and by their unanimous vote Washington be- 
came the first President of the United States. 
One indication of Washington's greatness was 
his willingness to recognize and to use the 
superior ability of others. He accordingly 
chose able advisers, chief among whom were 
Thomas Jefferson as Secretary of State, and 
Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treas- 
ury. While the former, by virtue of his posi- 
tion, was in a sense the leading member of the 
Administration, the work of Hamilton, in view 
of conditions, was more immediately impor- 
tant. 

Fina ce '^^^ most pressing needs of the 
Government were financial, and the 
first measure passed by Congress, after a for- 
mal enactment providing for the taking of 

77 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the oaths of office, was a revenue act levying 
moderate duties upon imports. At the same 
time a tonnage act was adopted imposing 
duties upon shipping, and this was also in the 
nature of a navigation act, for by discriminat- 
ing duties it encouraged American shipping at 
the expense of foreign, and forced the coast- 
wise trade into American vessels. These acts 
were important, but the real financial problem 
was a larger one and was left for Hamilton to 
solve. His successful handling of it stands out 
conspicuously, even in a career that was other- 
wise brilliant. The establishment of the credit 
of the United States was the object which he 
sought to attain, and his recommendations 
thereto were presented in a series of masterly 
reports. His chief proposals were: the funding 
or bonding of the United States debt, both 
foreign and domestic, so as to place all forms 
of it on a uniform stable basis; the assumption 
by the Federal Government of the war debts 
incurred by the individual states ; increased tax- 
ation to provide the additional revenue neces- 
sary; and the establishment of a central finan- 
cial institution in the form of a national bank. 
This was going farther than most people had 
counted on and aroused considerable opposi- 
tion, some of which was temperamental, and 
some was justifiable. It meant an unexpected 
and perhaps unwarranted exercise of power by 

78 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

the central government, arousing the fears of 
many good citizens; and there was also not a 
little speculation in Government securities, 
leading to the cry of "Favored interests!" 
which would profit by the rise in values. It 
took some manipulation, therefore, such as 
winning the support of Southern members by 
yielding to them the location of the national 
capital on the Potomac, and some slight con- 
cessions had to be made, but the Secretary 
finally succeeded in getting his proposals 
through Congress substantially in the form in 
which they had been presented. 

Like most large schemes, Hamilton's finan- 
cial undertakings Involved an element of risk. 
This was not because they were beyond the 
resources of the United States, but because 
they went beyond the willingness of the people 
to carry the burden. The country was experi- 
encing, as it had in the days of the Confeder- 
ation, some of the unfortunate consequences 
of things done in Revolutionary times. The 
people were so unaccustomed that they were 
really opposed to taxation, and their antipathy 
proved to be so deep and lasting that the 
United States, beginning In 1789, grew more 
and more to depend upon indirect taxation, 
which is not so Immediately felt. One of Ham- 
ilton's reasons for insisting upon an excise tax 
was that the people might be taught to accept 

79 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

taxation, and he was not unwilling to assume 
the responsibility of putting down opposition, 
as proved to be necessary in the so-called 
Whiskey Insurrection in Pennsylvania in 1794. 
Even with the increases in tariff rates that 
were made, and taking into account all other 
sources of income, the fact remains that the 
revenues were insufficient to meet the growing 
expenses of the Government and of the funded 
debt as well. Unless the people were willing 
to make much greater sacrifices than they ever 
had made in the past or had shown any disposi- 
tion to make, there was a prospect that Ham- 
ilton's financial plans would have ended in 
partial failure at least. The crisis did not come, 
because the situation was relieved by help from 
an entirely unlooked-for source. 

. With the establishment of peace in 

relations ^ 7^3 ^^^ United States had sunk into 
insignificance, for there is no mis- 
taking the attitude and actions of other nations. 
Spain, still hopeful of obtaining the region 
south and west of the Ohio River, alternately 
intrigued with the Indians and plotted with 
discontented Americans, in fine disregard of 
the Government of the United States. In the 
Northwest the British retained military posts 
contrary to treaty stipulations, although there 
was some justification or excuse in the claim 
that the Americans had failed to live up to their 

80 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

side of the agreement. The humiliating thing 
was that the Americans might object and pro- 
test but they could not prevent the retention of 
these forts within their own boundaries. The 
light in which the British regarded their former 
colonies is shown by their refusal to commission 
a minister to the United States for nearly ten 
years. Even France treated the United States 
as a prot4g6 and not as an equal. The heart of 
the whole matter is found in an assertion by 
Captain Isaac Snow of Harpswell, when the 
Federal Constitution was under consideration 
in Massachusetts: "I, sir, since the war, have 
had commerce with six different nations of 
the globe, and ... I find this country held in 
the same light by foreign nations, as a well- 
behaved negro in a gentleman's family." 

When war broke out in Europe in 1793, the 
United States again rose to a position of some 
consequence. The people were following the 
course of the French Revolution with eager 
interest. The abolition of the monarchy re- 
ceived general approval. The proclamation of 
the Convention declaring it to be the mission 
of France to establish the liberty of peoples 
against kings met with marked sympathy, and 
when told that this meant carrying the gospel 
of American liberty to all the world their en- 
thusiasm was unrestrained. There was an 
extraordinary series of celebrations in all parts 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the United States, such as banquets, civic 
feasts, and processions, accompanied with bon- 
fires, bell-ringing, and the firing of cannon. 
Democratic societies were formed, and one at 
least, in Charleston, was actually adopted by 
the Jacobin Club of Paris. As a further indica- 
tion of sympathy and approval titles were de- 
clared to be absurd in a republic and some who 
opposed even the use of "Mr." addressed each 
other as "Citizen." When Genet, the minister 
of the French Republic, arrived in the United 
States the reception accorded to him was in 
the nature of an ovation. 

But the execution of Louis XVI, followed as 
it was by the war with Great Britain, Hol- 
land, and Spain, made Americans hesitate and 
consider, and so when Washington issued a 
proclamation declaring that the United States 
would maintain "a conduct friendly and im- 
partial towards the belligerent powers," it 
came as a dash of cold water to bring them 
to their senses. Washington's Proclamation, 
and an act of Congress in the following year 
enforcing it, set a new standard of neutrality 
in international law. From the standpoint of 
the development of the United States the ac- 
tion was undoubtedly justifiable, for it was 
important that the country should be kept out 
of European quarrels and should be free to work 
out its own salvation. Accordingly reasons 

82 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

were found for refusing to accept any obliga- 
tion under the treaties of 1778, yet the fact 
cannot be ignored that, in view of what the 
French had done for the United States in its 
war for independence, Americans have been 
on the defensive with regard to this neutraUty. 
„ ^ , To those who have seen the enor- 
trade mous profits going to neutrals in 

the Great War, it is not necessary 
to explain the advantages accruing from neu- 
trality. The details may have been different, but 
the essentials were the same in 1793 as in 1914. 
With the outbreak of war France immediately 
threw open her colonial ports to neutrals, and 
the Americans, by their geographic position, 
and having not only the best of ships and sail- 
ors, but also surplus products in abundance, 
were ready and eager to take advantage of the 
situation. The French quickly appreciated the 
benefit of this to them and were in a measure 
reconciled to American neutrality. But Great 
Britain could not sit idly by and let her enemy 
be relieved from the pressure which she ought 
to have been able to exert by her superior 
navy. Upon the assertion of principles, such 
as the so-called Rule of 1756, and by an exten- 
sion of the list of contraband, she began seiz- 
ing American vessels in the West Indies. Re- 
lations were strained to the breaking point, 
but Great Britain could not afford to antag- 

83 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

onize the United States by too drastic measures. 
Jay's Treaty of 1794 removed some of the 
most serious causes of difficulty and arranged 
for the settlement of others, and as is usual in 
such cases a modus operandi was developed. 
The demand in Europe was for West Indian 
products. The Americans had a perfect right 
to trade directly with the belligerent countries, 
provided it was in articles not contraband of 
war. They might also trade directly with the 
European colonies in the West Indies. Accord- 
ingly goods were transported from the West 
Indies to the United States, where they were 
landed and duties upon them were paid ; they 
thereby became a part of the stock of the United 
States, and could then be carried to Europe. 

Apparently the British acquiesced in this 
in the belief that, because of the expense and 
amount of capital required, the indirect trade 
could not be carried on to such an extent as to 
do any great harm. Yet the trade grew by leaps 
and bounds. At the present day we are so 
accustomed to dealing in billions that the fig- 
ures of the eighteenth and early nineteenth 
centuries seem pitiably small. But propor- 
tions may indicate what this meant to the 
United States. In the course of a few years 
the tonnage of American vessels engaged in the 
neutral trade more than doubled, while exports 
increased to five times their previous amounts, 

84 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

and the larger share of these exports repre- 
sented the products of foreign countries. 

The profits of the carrying trade were accord- 
ingly large, and yet a relatively small class was 
affected in comparison with those who were 
benefited by the increased demand for Amer- 
ican articles. The West India islands, as of 
old, wanted foodstuffs and lumber; while the 
feeding of the immense armies called for Amer- 
ican assistance, all the greater because of the 
shortage of crops in Europe ; and military needs 
still further enlarged the demand for lumber 
from the United States. Under these condi- 
tions the exports of domestic products from 
the United States more than doubled, and 
prices were affected to almost the same extent. 
For example, the average price for flour for sev- 
eral years before 1793 had been $5.40 a barrel, 
and the average for twelve years thereafter was 
$9.12, an increase of about seventy per cent. 
So great were the profits from this commodity 
that Virginia was led into grain-raising on an 
extensive scale and, in the country west of 
the Alleghenies, Kentucky and Tennessee 
became flour-exporting states. 

The neutral trade was the unexpected factor 
that came to the rescue of Hamilton's financial 
plans. It meant more than ordinary prosper- 
ity; it brought comparatively great wealth, 
and it seems to have been responsible for the 

85 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

accumulation of a surplus fund of capital for 
the first time in fairly large quantities. The 
increased revenues of the Government, directly 
and indirectly from the neutral trade, made it 
possible to meet all running expenses, to pay 
the interest on the debt, and to take up bonds 
as they became due. It is evident at once that 
the neutral trade of 1793 corresponded closely 
to the old trade of colonial days. There were 
differences, of course; the demand for certain 
products fell off, while that for others in- 
creased ; and a new Southern export was found 
in cotton, which, with the invention of the 
cotton gin, became an increasingly important 
item. The underlying features of the trade, 
however, remained the same, the fundamental 
principle being that the people of the United 
States were still relying upon their extractive 
industries and were still dependent upon for- 
eign markets and foreign manufactures. 

_ ..^ , Developments, such as have been de- 
Political .,1 , . t • 1 TT • 1 

parties scribed as takmg place m the United 

States, inevitably caused divisions 
in public opinion; not even the Revolution 
had been fought by a united people. But 
although British parties had been reproduced 
in America, with the Whigs as patriots and the 
Tories thereby becoming a name of reproach, 
this did not mean that there was any funda- 
mental political organization, and when the 

86 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

war was over only Whigs remained. Of course, 
local politics had always aroused differences 
of opinion and consequently factions and local 
organizations had developed. The ground was 
therefore ready and no sooner was there a 
national development, with questions of na- 
tional scope arising, than divisions of opinion 
on a nation-wide scale were evident and politi- 
cal parties representative of them grew up. 

The ratification of the Constitution pre- 
sented such a question, with the Federalists 
supporting the new form of government and 
the Anti-Federalists opposing it. When the 
decision was in favor of adoption the great 
majority of the people in the United States, 
even of the opposition, believed in supporting 
the new Government and giving it an oppor- 
tunity to try itself out. And so the Anti- 
Federalists disappeared, but the differences 
of opinion did not, for they represented a 
diversity as old as mankind between the con- 
servative and the radical. On this occasion 
the variance was between those who were in 
favor of a strongly centralized government and 
those who preferred decentralization of power. 
It was also a difference between those who be- 
lieved in the control of affairs by the select few, 
or by the upper class, and those who believed 
in advancing the interests of the mass of the 
people. 

87 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

A divergence so fundamental was certain 
again to manifest itself as soon as a sufficiently 
important question arose, and that occurred 
almost immediately in connection with the 
measures relating to finance. All were agreed 
on the necessity of a revenue, but there was 
no agreement as to the ways and means of 
raising it. An aggressive policy like Hamilton's 
was bound to arouse opposition. That was 
only human. Men who were in hearty sym- 
pathy with his object differed with him as to 
methods. Antagonism that was more serious 
came from a personal distrust of him and his 
supporters. The inevitable speculation in Gov- 
ernment securities had greatly profited certain 
individuals, and it was believed that this was 
due not merely to foresight but to the advan- 
tage of inside information. Accordingly there 
developed a strong opposition to paying the 
full value of Government securities to the pres- 
ent holders rather than to the original owners. 
There also arose a sharp divergence as to the 
justice or injustice of the assumption of the 
state debts; and there was a further radical 
difference of opinion on the advisability of 
an excise tax. Each of these measures in turn 
tended to strengthen the opposition until the 
climax was reached on the question of a na- 
tional bank. 

Such consistent divisions as have been noted 

88 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

are apt to find their justification in some more 
fundamental principle than that of mere pol- 
icy. Inasmuch as the Government of the United 
States was organized under a written consti- 
tution it was natural that the differences of 
opinion should ultimately turn upon the inter- 
pretation of that document, — that is, as to 
whether the measures proposed were permis- 
sible or not under the fundamental instrument 
of government. With a strict interpretation of 
the Constitution it did not seem that a central 
national bank could be justified, however de- 
sirable it might be. By the very circumstances 
of the case the opponents of the Administra- 
tion were forced into being strict construction- 
ists. 

Like every other human activity there is 
always a personal element in the organization 
of a political party which needs to be taken 
into account; and while motives are not easy 
to determine, leadership usually stands out 
clear and recognizable. By temperament as 
well as by fate Hamilton was designated as the 
leader of the Administration and its supporters, 
who seized the prestige coming from the adop- 
tion of the Constitution and called themselves 
Federalists. They represented the continu- 
ance of the established order and the mainte- 
nance in control of affairs of the same ruling 
class that had dominated in colonial times. 

89 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Into the new opposition there went many 
of the former Anti-Federalists; it was natural 
that those who had been opposed to the Con- 
stitution should now be in favor of the strictest 
limitation of that document. Madison, how- 
ever, had been a loyal supporter of the Consti- 
tution, and yet he was one of the prominent 
men in the new party. It is evident, then, that 
the party represented something more than 
strict construction, and in fact it contained 
the radical and more democratic elements of 
the community. These men liked to call them- 
selves Republicans, but the Federalists also 
called themselves Republicans, and so a con- 
venient name for the party of the opposition 
became that of Democratic-Republicans. They 
found their natural leader in Thomas Jefferson. 

The rest of the party development followed 
in the ordinary course of events. Washing- 
ton might advise his fellow citizens strongly 
against the danger of "cabal," and he might 
try to keep aloof from partisan prejudices, but 
from temperament as well as from acceptance 
and support of Hamilton's ideas he became a 
Federalist in spite of himself. While his ap- 
pointments were made mainly on the basis of 
ability and fitness, instances were increasing 
in which it was necessary or advisable to have 
men who were friendly to the Administration. 
It was found more convenient for his chief 

90 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

executive officers to meet together with him 
for consultation and so form what is called the 
Cabinet, and it seemed impossible to have such 
a body of advisers with opinions radically in 
opposition to one another. There was only 
one outcome, and that was the appointment 
of the chief executive officers and then of most 
other officers from men of one party. 

There is little doubt that the Federalists 
represented what had always been a minority 
of the population, and it was not alone the 
limitations of the suffrage that prevented the 
majority from gaining control; custom and 
social deference had much to do with it. The 
first service which Jefferson and the Demo- 
cratic-Republican party are said to have 
rendered was in persuading the ordinary man 
that he had a right to vote against the wishes 
of his so-called superiors. But it was also a 
matter of ignorance and indifference, for most 
men did not know and did not care about 
political questions until, by propaganda and 
an organized system of committees, the Dem- 
ocratic-Republicans aroused them and suc- 
ceeded, as we should say, in "getting out the 
vote." Federalists of the old order protested 
against such organization and methods, not 
as being unconstitutional, but as being extra- 
legal, as contrary to the established order, and 
they even went so far as to intimate and occa- 

91 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

sionally openly to charge that such action was 
treasonable. Yet protests were of no avail 
against the rising strength of democracy, except 
that they may have held it in restraint for a 
few years. 

p . To the present generation of Ameri- 

relations cdias it seems unnecessary, but Wash- 
ington knew his countrymen and 
their faults when he inserted in his Farewell Ad- 
dress the warning against "passionate attach- 
ment" to any other nation, for oddly enough, 
after the subject of finance, about the most im- 
portant division in domestic politics was on 
questions of foreign relations. By social as well 
as by financial connections, that is as a class, 
the Federalists were closely in touch with the 
British and, as a matter of course, in sympathy 
with them. Indeed, it might fairly be said of 
official America that its neutrality was friendly 
to Great Britain. Party antagonism therefore 
as well as natural inclination led the Demo- 
cratic-Republicans to become pro-French and 
to favor the French Revolution. To show how 
far they were carried by their feelings, John 
Davis noted in his Travels that shortly after 
his arrival in the United States in 1798, having 
translated for Caritat, the bookseller, Cam- 
paigns of Buonaparte in Italy, " on the fourth 
of June it was ushered into the literary world 
amidst the acclamations of the Democrats, 

92 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

and the revilings of the Federalists. This was 
to me extraordinary." 

The foreign situation was so complicated 
that it is little wonder that Americans were 
bewildered and that at times the political 
parties were inconsistent in their attitude. 
Jay's Treaty had removed the immediate 
danger of trouble between Great Britain and 
the United States, and after France and Spain 
came together in the Peace of Basle in 1795, 
It seemed as if it produced opposite effects 
upon these two countries. Spain was evidently 
expecting that trouble would result and thought 
that there was no use in adding the United 
States to her enemies, and accordingly sought 
to obtain merit by yielding on all the points 
at issue with that country. The disputed 
boundary question in the Southwest was set- 
tled in accordance with American claims, and 
not only was the free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi River recognized, but the all-important 
right of deposit at New Orleans was granted 
to the Americans. In fact, it was this treaty 
of San Lorenzo which made it possible for the 
West to share in the neutral trade. On the 
other hand, with each successive triumph of 
France in the European struggle the United 
States became of less and less importance to 
her and she was pleased to regard Jay's Treaty 
as evincing an unfriendly disposition. How- 

93 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ever, France was not yet ready for an open 
breach, and some conciliatory efforts were 
made with an eye to the election of 1796, for 
party attitudes were well known and much 
was hoped from the man who might succeed 
Washington in the presidency. When the 
Federalists were successful in electing John 
Adams it seems as if the French did not con- 
sider it worth while to try any more, and rela- 
tions between the two countries rapidly went 
from bad to worse. Representatives were re- 
called, treaties were suspended, commercial 
intercourse was stopped, and active prepara- 
tions for war were made. Although ships were 
seized and conflicts occurred between armed 
vessels of the two countries, war was never 
formally declared, for France did not want 
war with the United States, and just when the 
outlook seemed darkest overtures were made 
which rendered possible the restoration of 
Americans to their former position of neutral- 
ity. With Napoleon rising into power, a con- 
vention was concluded in 1800 which disposed 
of former treaties and established a satisfac- 
tory working basis. So near to war had it come, 
however, that later, when passing upon claims 
for damages, the Supreme Court of the United 
States declared that "virtual warfare" had 
existed in 1798. 



94 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

. When the crisis became acute party 
Dolitics differences were allowed to disap- 
pear, the Democratic-Republicans 
showed that they were first of all Americans, 
and the whole country became anti-French. 
The Federalists wisely made use of this una- 
nimity in pressing active measures preparatory 
to war; but they used it unwisely in trying to 
obtain political advantages. There were many 
foreigners in the United States who had been 
more or less a source of trouble and who cer- 
tainly were thorns in the side of the Adminis- 
tration. Moreover, the Democratic-Republi- 
cans had quickly appreciated the advantage of 
the press and in a quite modem way had even 
founded newspapers for the spread of their 
ideas, while the language used was of such a 
character that modern newspaper vituperation 
seems mild in comparison. In other words the 
situation may have warranted some action on 
the part of the Government, but in the pass- 
ing of four acts commonly known as the Alien 
and Sedition Acts, in 1798, the Federalists went 
too far. They not only made naturalization too 
difficult, but they also placed arbitrary powers 
in the hands of the Government, and they es- 
tablished what were regarded as limitations on 
the freedom of the press. Their methods may 
have been constitutional; there is little doubt 
that they were inexpedient. 

95 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

The Democratic-Republicans in their turn 
were also jockeying for a position of political 
advantage. In a series of resolutions which, 
because they were adopted by the legislatures 
of those states, became known as the Kentucky 
and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, 
Jefferson and Madison laid down certain general 
principles declaring the Constitution to be a 
compact to which the states were parties and, 
when the Federal Government overstepped the 
powers therein granted, that the states should 
be the judges both of the infraction and of the 
mode of redress. While the resolutions never 
accomplished much practically, they remained 
as a political platform of the Democratic-Repub- 
licans in particular, but also in general as a state- 
ment of principles for any party out of power. 

The day of the Federalists was evidently 
passing, but it was the combination of events 
that brought about their downfall. They 
overreached themselves in the Alien and Sedi- 
tion Acts and that may well have been the 
finishing touch, or it may have been the death 
of Washington in 1799, for his name and sup- 
port had always been their greatest asset. 
The Democratic-Republicans had been suffi- 
ciently strong to obtain the second largest vote 
for Thomas Jefferson in 1796, thereby making 
him Vice-President, and in 1800 they were 
successful in electing him to the presidency. 

96 



THE NEW GOVERNMENT 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Besides the general histories already noticed, special men- 
tion should be made of James Schouler, History of the United 
States under the Constitution (7 vols., 1880-19 13). J. S. Bas- 
sett, The Federalist System (1906), is limited to the adminis- 
trations of Washington and Adams. C. R. Fish, American 
Diplomacy (1915), contains the best account of the foreign 
relations of the United States, but without appreciating the 
full significance of the neutral carrying trade. 

Among the many special studies, the subjects of which are 
indicated by their titles, attention should be called to H. J. 
Ford, Rise and Growth of American Politics: a Sketch of Con- 
stitutional Development (1898); M. Ostrogorski, Democracy 
and the Party System in the United States, a Study in Extra- 
Constitutional Government (1910); H. B. Learned, The Presi- 
dent's Cabinet (1912); C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the 
Patronage (1905); D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the 
United States (1903). 

Biographies are so numerous that to mention any of them 
is only to invite the charge of discrimination, but most of 
the volumes in the American Statesman series (1882-1900), 
edited by J. T. Morse, Jr., are well worth reading. Among the 
best of the others are W. C. Ford, George Washington (2 vols,, 
1900); W. G. Sumner, Alexander Hamilton (1890); F. S. Oliver, 
Alexander Hamilton, an Essay on American Union (1907). 



CHAPTER V 

LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

The success of the popular party in the election 
of JeiTerson was often referred to as " the 
Revolution of 1800." The changes brought 
about were indeed far-reaching, but proved to 
be rather different in character from what had 
been expected. On the one hand, the disaster 
freely predicted by the gloomy Federalists did 
not materialize; in fact, the country prospered 
under a Republican regime. On the other hand, 
the Democratic-Republicans failed to redeem 
their promises to undo as much as possible 
of the mischief that had been wrought by the 
Federalists. They started out bravely enough 
by repealing legislation and removing objec- 
tionable officials; but, having been elected 
upon principles of economy and a stricter 
construction of the Constitution, they were 
compelled in a short time by the very force 
of circumstances to repudiate their own doc- 
trines and to adopt those of their opponents, 
as well as to follow their opponents' way of 
doing things. 

The Old As has been so frequently the case 
National expansion was a large element in 
^^^^ the new phases of American de- 

velopment. By 1800 the population of the 

98 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

Northwest had increased to such an extent 
that a division of the territory became advis- 
able, in preparation for the admission of 
the eastern part into the Union as a state. 
This new state of Ohio, the first child of the 
territorial system, afforded an excuse for the 
building of a better road from east to west 
by the National Government. There was no 
constitutional authority for spending the public 
money for such a purpose, but on the basis of 
a quid pro quo of exemption from taxation, it 
was agreed to devote a certain percentage of 
the proceeds of public land sales in Ohio for 
this purpose. When the amounts were insuffi- 
cient Congress, in the form of "advances," 
supplied additional funds to several times the 
amount that could ever be received in return. 
The same practice was followed with each of 
the other new states in turn as it was admitted 
into the Union, so that the road was extended 
to the Mississippi River and beyond. But Con- 
gress grew tired of this pretense, as well as of 
paying for repairs and maintenance, and even- 
tually the road was given by the Federal Gov- 
ernment to the states through which it passed. 
The formalities had been observed, but the Old 
National Road had been built at Government 
expense and under the sanction of a strict 
construction party. 



99 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

... Great as had been the increase of 

settlers in the Northwest, it was 
insignificant in comparison with the increase 
of population south of the Ohio; and together 
there were over 600,000 settlers west of the 
Alleghenies by 1800. For these people the 
question of transportation was vital. The Old 
National Road when completed would be 
useful, but it could by no means meet the grow- 
ing needs of the West; the navigation of the 
Mississippi River was a practical necessity. 
The treaty with Spain in 1 795 had relieved the 
situation temporarily, but it seemed as if Spain 
had not relinquished her hopes of some time 
owning or controlling what was left of the 
Southwest and she was following a policy not 
altogether friendly to the Americans. The 
privileges which she had granted by the treaty 
had in a way been wrested from her by the 
European situation. 

An essential part of the navigation of the 
Mississippi was the right of deposit at the 
mouth of the river. This meant permission 
to land and transship goods without the pay- 
ment of unduly heavy charges or duties. The 
first grant of this privilege had been for three 
years, and when that time expired, in 1798, 
Spain withdrew the right until a protest from 
the United States and a demonstration of force 
on the part of the Western settlers themselves 

100 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

led her to concede it again. The situation was 
a delicate one, requiring careful handling, but 
was apparently working out fairly satisfacto- 
rily for the United States, when suddenly the 
whole aspect was changed by the retrocession 
of Louisiana to France. 

Dreaming apparently of the restoration not 
only of her old boundaries in Europe but of her 
former trans- Atlantic possessions, France again 
planned a colonial empire. With Napoleon in 
power it was easy to bring such pressure to bear 
as to induce Spain to give back the territory 
of Louisiana to France, which was done in 
1802. The agreement was a secret one, but it 
had been generally understood in Europe long 
before and rumors of it had reached America, 
so that the Government was prepared to act. 
Just at this moment Spain once more withdrew 
the right of deposit. Jefferson at once wrote 
to the American representative in Paris, for the 
benefit of the French authorities, that it was 
a very different thing to have France instead of 
Spain in control of the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi River, — a strong nation instead of a 
weak one. Then he significantly added : ' ' The 
day that France takes possession of New Or- 
leans . . . seals the union of two nations, which 
in conjunction can maintain exclusive posses- 
sion of the ocean. From that moment we must 
marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation." 

lOI 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Robert R. Livingston was the American min- 
ister to France; James Monroe was sent to 
join him; and they were authorized to offer 
ten million dollars for the possession of West 
Florida and New Orleans, so that the United 
States might own sufficient land at the mouth 
of the river to prevent any further disputes. 
What followed has always been one of the 
romantic, almost incredible incidents in Ameri- 
can history. Whether Napoleon was tired of 
the colonial scheme, whether its difficulties 
discouraged him, whether it was on account of 
the inevitable resumption of the war with 
England, or whether it was because of a short- 
age of funds, will probably never be satis- 
factorily determined; perhaps all of them were 
elements in a complex situation. Jefferson's 
attitude must also have been a potent force: 
the friend of the French Revolution, strongly 
pro-French in sympathy, on being elected to 
the presidency had proved to be whole- 
heartedly American when the interests of his 
country were at stake. Napoleon's reasons 
may not have been clear, but there was no 
misunderstanding his proposal, when he sug- 
gested that instead of a comparatively small 
piece the United States should purchase the 
whole of Louisiana. The offer came as a sur- 
prise, but the American commissioners, seeing 
the opportunity, were wise enough and coura- 

I02 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

geoiis enough to seize it. The terms were 
merely a matter of bargaining, and the total 
amount paid, including certain claims that were 
assumed by the United States, was $15,000,000. 

However bold as a thinker, Jefferson was 
often hesitant in action, and he did not believe 
that it was within the power of the National 
Government to make this purchase. The size 
of Louisiana seemed to stagger him, for close 
reasoning must have shown him that if the 
United States could add on West Florida and 
New Orleans it could also acquire a larger area. 
But he could not reconcile it with his con- 
science, and he suggested an amendment to 
the Constitution which would authorize the 
purchase. Warned that there was no time for 
such delay lest Napoleon should change his 
mind, Jefferson reluctantly consented to allow 
the bargain to be completed, with the under- 
standing that a constitutional amendment 
justifying the act should be subsequently 
adopted. To his surprise this was found to 
be unnecessary, for the purchase of Louisiana 
proved to be popular in the United States, and 
popular approval is a wonderful salve for a 
wounded political conscience. Strict construc- 
tion of the Constitution meant something dif- 
ferent after 1803 from what it had meant 
before. 

The acquisition of Louisiana, like the Decla- 

103 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ration of Independence, and the Ordinance of 
1787, and the Federal Constitution, was an 
epoch-making event in American history. In 
the first place, it doubled the area of the United 
States, thereby increasing enormously the nat- 
ural resources of the country. Then, too, 
like every other annexation of territory, it re- 
sulted in increasing the power of the central 
government; for in carrying out the provisions 
of the treaty, in the later sale of land, in the en- 
couragement of settlement, and in the govern- 
ment of the territories that were formed, there 
was an exercise and inevitable strengthening of 
national authority. Finally, to mention noth- 
ing more, the mere control of the Mississippi 
River from its source to its mouth quieted dis- 
content in the West and raised the Westerners' 
opinion of the government that could accom- 
plish so much, and an excellent indication of 
this is the failure of Burr's Conspiracy a few 
years later. Whatever may have been the object 
of that expedition. It had relied upon the dis- 
content of the West, and it failed when that 
was found to be lacking. The substance of the 
whole matter is that the acquisition of Louisi- 
ana resulted in a great strengthening of na- 
tional feeling. 

Barbary One other matter in foreign rela- 
pirates tions brought great credit to Jef- 

ferson and his administration, and that was 
104 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

the war with Tripoli. Ever since his Paris 
days Jefferson had believed in the use of force 
rather than bribery in dealing with the Barbary 
pirates. So when he was elected to the presi- 
dency, in spite of the embarrassment to his 
Republican principles caused by the increased 
expense and the maintenance of a navy, Jeffer- 
son had insisted upon fighting against Tripoli. 
He conducted the war with energy and decision 
and brought it to a successful conclusion. 
„ On the whole the Democratic-Re- 

rights publican Administration had been 

so great a success that in 1804 Jeffer- 
son was reelected President with relatively little 
opposition. The brightness of his record, how- 
ever, was dimmed during his second term of 
office because of foreign complications in which 
he showed less judgment and determination 
than he had in the case of Tripoli, perhaps be- 
cause he was treating with stronger powers. 
The Napoleonic Wars, interrupted by the so- 
called Peace of Amiens, had broken out again 
in 1803 with Great Britain as the leader and the 
mainstay of the coalition that had formed 
against France. It soon came to a life-and- 
death struggle between these powers, for Nel- 
son's naval victory at Trafalgar in the autumn 
of 1805 made the British supreme upon the sea, 
but Austerlitz in December left Napoleon more 
than ever master of the Continent. 

105 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Under the circumstances, however, it was 
fighting at long range as neither power could 
strike a vital blow. When it thereupon became 
a question of trying to starve each other out, 
it was evident that Great Britain must use the 
strength of her navy and her control of the sea. 
The neutral trade was relieving the enemy from 
some of the pressure, and the change in the 
British attitude toward that trade was admi- 
rably shown in the title of a pamphlet by James 
Stephen which received wide circulation, War 
in Disguise, or the Frauds of the Neutral Flags. 
It was still more clearly revealed in the case 
of the Essex in 1805, when the Lords Com- 
missioners of Appeals declared -that although 
goods had been landed in America and duties 
paid, they were still destined for the enemy and 
therefore subject to confiscation. The British 
were going back of the face of the records to 
the intent of the shipper. 

But this was not enough, and a British Order 
in Council of 1806 announced a blockade from 
the port of Brest to the river Elbe, although 
it attempted to make it effective only from 
Ostend to the Seine. It may seem absurd, but 
privateers were making such serious inroads 
upon British commerce that color was given 
to Napoleon's claim that he would starve the 
British into yielding. And so, a few months 
after the British Order of 1806, he retorted with 

106 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

the Berlin Decree, which declared the British 
Islands in a state of blockade and forbade any 
vessel coming from Great Britain or the British 
colonies to be received in French ports. The 
British in turn, in January and November, 
1807, forbade all coastal trade between French 
ports, and then declared a blockade of all ports 
from which the British were excluded, although 
some concessions were made to neutrals if they 
traded through English ports and paid certain 
duties. At last Napoleon, by his Milan Decree 
in December, declared that any vessel which 
submitted to the British orders was thereby 
rendered subject to seizure by the French. 

Freight rates had been so high and profit so 
great that previously It had been worth while 
for the Americans to run the risk of their vessels 
being captured, but this new French and British 
retaliatory policy meant the annihilation of 
their carrying trade. Americans might protest 
against paper blockades and claim that "free 
ships make free goods," but that was useless 
In the Intensity of the struggle between Great 
Britain and Napoleon. Both belligerents were 
over-stepping the boundaries of neutral rights, 
and each justified its action on the ground of 
provocation by the other. Napoleon was the 
more flagrant but Great Britain the more ob- 
vious transgressor, because the British were 
supreme upon the sea. Still the French could 

107 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

and did seize large numbers of American ves- 
sels in their ports. A most surprising, and to 
Americans humiliating, aspect of the situation 
was the way in which vessels of the belligerents 
patrolled the American coast and violated 
American neutrality. The French were as bad 
as the British except that their opportunities 
were more limited and so their acts were fewer, 
and the Americans would have been justified 
at almost any time during these years in going 
to war with either France or Great Britain. 

A situation already difficult was rendered 
critical by the question of impressment, which 
hardly arose with the French at all, but with 
the British was at times so serious and always 
so dramatic as to supersede in the popular 
mind the more fundamental trouble of inter- 
ference with the carrying trade. The British 
had always had hard work in maintaining the 
necessary number of men in their nax-y, and 
had been accustomed to rely upon enforced 
service or impressment. Even in colonial days 
the better wages and treatment in the Ameri- 
can merchant service had attracted many Eng- 
lish seamen, and now the demands of the neu- 
tral trade made it worth while for American 
shippers to offer still greater inducements, so 
that desertions from the British service were 
common. 

As if this were not enough the matter was 

io8 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

further complicated by the opposing points of 
view on the subject of naturalization. The 
Americans being a nation of immigrants had 
found it necessary to their very existence that 
subjects of foreign powers should be allowed to 
become citizens of their state, and naturaliza- 
tion was one of the things early provided for. 
European powers had never been willing to 
recognize the principle of expatriation, and the 
British doctrine "once an Englishman always 
an Englishman" was the accepted standard. 
The British were right from their point of view, 
the Americans were right from theirs, and the 
matter could be settled only by international 
agreement which had not yet been reached. 
Furthermore, as there was no definition of 
United States citizenship and no clear distinc- 
tion between that and citizenship of an individ- 
ual state, each state was free to determine the 
conditions by which a person might become 
a citizen, and those terms were relatively easy, 
varying from a few months to a few years of 
residence. Under such circumstances naturali- 
zation papers were easily obtained, and many 
stories are current of the prices at which they 
were sold. The amount of it was that a deserter 
from a British vessel could quickly and cheaply 
obtain the necessary citizenship papers in the 
United States. 

Enough has been said to show the unlimited 

109 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

possibilities of trouble that existed, and it is 
aside from the mark to discuss the justice or 
injustice of impressment. If it ever had been 
right, it was justifiable at this time in the ex- 
tremity of Great Britain's need. Yet that was 
after all a matter of British domestic policy; 
the Americans could only object to the way 
in which it was carried out. Even if Great 
Britain was warranted in stopping American 
vessels on the high seas and in searching for 
contraband, had she any right to search for 
deserters? Was an Englishman who had be- 
come an American citizen subject to impress- 
ment? These were in a sense idle questions; 
the British had the power and they were using 
it. 

Whatever justification there may have been 
for what the British were doing, there was no 
excuse for the high-handed way in which they 
did them, and the only explanation is to be 
found in the passiveness of the Americans. 
The culmination was the unfortunate encoun- 
ter in June, 1807, when the United States 
frigate Chesapeake was stopped outside of 
American territorial limits by the Leopard 
with a demand for deserters from certain 
specified British ships. Their existence on 
board being denied and right to search re- 
fused, the Chesapeake, unprepared, was fired 
upon and twenty-one men had been killed or 

no 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

wounded before one gun was at last discharged 
in return and the flag hauled down. The order 
for search was then carried out and four men 
were taken as deserters. The extent of the 
outrage may be gauged by the fact that of the 
four one was hanged, one died, and the other 
two, after five years of bitter wrangling, were 
restored to the deck of the Chesapeake, and 
the American flag saluted. 
^ . , Of course the excitement in America 

PG3.C6Itll 

coercion ^^^ intense, and when Jefferson is- 
sued a proclamation closing Amer- 
ican ports to British war vessels, it was re- 
garded as preliminary to a formal declaration of 
war. If it had been, the President would have 
found himself supported by a united country. 
But Jefferson was by nature peaceful, and it 
seems as if his experience in pre-Revolutionary 
times, with his remembrance of the pressure upon 
the British through non-importation agree- 
ments, must have affected his action now. 
So reluctant was he to come to the last resort 
of arms that he first made trial of peaceful 
coercion, and once embarked upon that method 
it was diflicult to give it up. 

Upon the President's recommenda- 

baiffo ^^^^ ^^^ probably in a form drafted 

by him. Congress adopted an act, 

in December, 1807, establishing an embargo, 

which forbade the departure of all vessels in 

III 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

United States ports for any foreign destina- 
tion. It could not be regarded as an act for the 
protection of American shipping, as the ship- 
pers did not wish to be protected ; the greater 
the risk, the greater the profit. Evasions of the 
embargo were frequent, while the successive 
acts passed for its enforcement became stricter 
and stricter and involved a usurpation of power 
by the executive department which was con- 
trary to all Jeffersonian and Democratic theo- 
ries of government. The British encouraged its 
evasion, but Napoleon approved the embargo 
as helping out his Continental system. He even 
went so far as to assist in enforcing it. By a 
decree early in 1808 he ordered all American 
ships in French ports to be seized because they 
were abroad in contravention of American laws 
and therefore in all probability engaged in 
enemy business. Eventually, the failure of the 
embargo was too patent to be ignored, and one 
of the last acts of his administration, perhaps 
the most humiliating of Jefferson's whole ca- 
reer, was signing the law for the repeal of the 
embargo. 

At the time of his reelection to the 
Madison presidency, JefTerson had let it be 

known that he would not accept a 

third term. The question of his successor was 

interesting but not exciting, for in the state 

of political parties the candidate supported by 

112 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

the Democratic-Republicans was sure to be 
successful, and Jefferson's preference was the 
deciding factor in selecting the man. He was in 
favor of his Secretary of State, James Madison, 
who was accordingly elected in 1 808 and in- 
augurated as President the following March. 
Madison, the master builder of the Constitu- 
tion, an efficient party leader in Congress, and 
an able Secretary of State, was still essentially 
the scholar in politics. A student and thinker, 
he was lacking in the qualities which make for 
success in a crisis demanding action. Henry 
Adams, in his scholarly History of the United 
States, characterized the man and his adminis- 
tration in a brilliant manner by the title to a 
single chapter, "Madison as Minerva" — the 
goddess of wisdom and of war is a fitting 
description of Madison as President. 

The act which repealed the embargo had 
substituted non-intercourse with the British 
and French, but with a proviso that, if either 
country should revoke its orders or decrees, 
trade with that country might be resumed. 
A new British minister to the United States, 
David M. Erskine, in his enthusiasm for the 
restoration of friendly relations, carried out 
what he conceived to be the spirit rather than 
the exact wording of his instructions. Madison, 
in turn, was so eager for peace, that he did not 
inquire even formally into Erskine's authoriza- 

113 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

tlon to take such important action, and upon 
a mere assurance that the orders in council 
would be revoked he issued a proclamation 
announcing the resumption of trade with 
Great Britain. The British Government, how- 
ever, promptly disavowed the arrangement of 
Erskine, and Madison had to issue a second 
proclamation revoking his former one. 

The experiment of non-intercourse having 
been a dismal failure, the opposite policy was 
tried. Trade with both Great Britain and 
France was resumed; but the offer was made 
that if either nation would recall its objection- 
able orders or decrees, non-intercourse would 
be reestablished with the other. This time, 
in his haste to retrieve his former blunder, 
Madison allowed himself to be overreached 
by Napoleon, who promised to revoke the 
French decrees by a certain date. Relying on 
this promise only, Madison issued the neces- 
sary warning to Great Britain. No evidence 
was forthcoming that Napoleon ever revoked 
his decrees, in fact the only news which came 
was that they were being enforced ; but having 
placed the United States In a false position the 
President obstinately maintained his stand. 

One may differ as to the interpretation of 
separate incidents or details, but it is difficult 
not to agree with the late Admiral Mahan's 
conclusion : — 

114 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

The United States at this time had abundant 
justification for war with both France and Great 
Britain, and it was within the righteous decis-ion 
of her own poHcy whether she should declare against 
either or both; but it is a serious impeachment of a 
Government's capacity and manfulness when . . . 
war comes . . . from a series of huckstering attempts 
to buy off one antagonist or the other, with the 
result of being fairly over-reached. . . . The course 
of Great Britain was high-handed, unjust, and not 
always straightforward; but it was candor itself 
alongside of Napoleon's.^ 

Matters could not continue lone: in 
ineap- ^j^jg way, for the humiliating inac- 
of war ^^^^ ^^ the Government was steadily 

spreading discontent throughout the 
United States. The rising generation, Amer- 
ican In spirit, was demanding defense of the 
national honor. The young, enthusiastic John 
C. Calhoun was representative of this spirit In 
the South, and Henry Clay was typical of the 
West. In the latter section there was a pe- 
culiar grievance because of the Indians. The 
everlasting cause of disturbance was as usual 
the encroachment of whites upon Indian lands. 
But that was not the way In which the West- 
erners looked at It ; their point of view Is much 
better shown by Theodore Roosevelt In his 
sympathetic Interpretation of that section. 
The Winning of the West. After recognizing 
the wrongs which the whites had commlt- 

1 Sea Power in its Relation to the War of 1812, pp. 249, 250. 
115 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ted, he still concludes, "The most ultimately 
righteous of all wars is a war with savages." 
So it was regarded by "the men of the West- 
ern Waters," and they firmly believed that 
they would have had no trouble with the 
Indians if the latter had not been supported 
and encouraged by Canadians. There may 
well have been sympathy and support from in- 
dividuals, but there is not the slightest justifi- 
cation for such a charge against the Canadian 
authorities. The Westerners, however, did not 
stop to make any such distinction and de- 
manded war against the British in general, 
but against the Indians and Canadians in par- 
ticular. 

W^hen the new Congress met in November 
of 1811 its changed character was shown in 
the election of Clay as Speaker of the House, 
and in the adoption of measures that were 
woefully inadequate, but were unmistakably in- 
dicative of a war spirit. It was the presidential 
year, and it is often asserted that the price of 
Madison's renomination was his consent to 
war — in which there is this much of truth, that 
he thereby obtained the support of the group 
of "War Hawks." On April i, 1 812, the Presi- 
dent recommended and Congress established 
a general embargo for ninety days as a pre- 
liminary to war. On June I, a war message 
was sent to Congress and, on June 18, the act 

116 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

declaring war was finally adopted and was 
signed by the President. The reason for action 
was simple enough : the limit of endurance had 
been reached. That war was declared against 
Great Britain and not against France was due 
to a combination of circumstances in which the 
pro-French attitude of the Administration, the 
personality of the President and the blunder- 
ing slowness of the British were important 
elements. 

_. __ The War of 1812 was a misfortune 
of 1812 ^^^ ^^^ United States because the 
time had passed when the people 
could have been united in supporting it. As 
John Randolph said in Congress, "We have 
been embargoed and non-intercoursed almost 
into a consumption, and this is not the time 
for battle." It was a misfortune for the British 
because they were leading the efforts to over- 
throw Napoleon and they regarded themselves, 
with some justification, as having been stabbed 
in the back by a people who should have been 
helping them. But the greatest misfortune of 
all was that the war might have been avoided. 
If there had been cable communication between 
the two countries it probably would not have 
come, for two days before the declaration of 
war by the United States it was announced in 
the House of Commons that the Orders in 
Council would be suspended. The British had 

117 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

been ready to yield for some time and were on 
the point of announcing it, and while the assas- 
sination of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perce- 
val, as he was entering the House of Commons 
on May ii, was an accident of history, it de- 
layed action by the British Government. Even 
then, if the United States had been adequately 
represented in London, matters might have 
been satisfactorily adjusted. 

War was undertaken for the purpose of 
forcing Great Britain to recognize the rights 
of the United States as a neutral. Henry Clay 
had boasted that "the militia of Kentucky are 
alone competent to place Montreal and Up- 
per Canada at your feet," and the Americans 
entered the war believing that they could con- 
quer Canada and then dictate peace. In fact, 
it has been charged that the acquisition of 
Canada was the real purpose of the war, but 
the several attempts to invade Canada proved 
dismal failures. 

On the other hand, the land efforts of the 
British were not serious until the battle of 
Leipsic and the abdication of Napoleon left 
them free to carry on the war in America with 
more vigor. Then an expedition from Canada 
was thwarted by an American victory over 
the Canadian fleet on Lake Champlain. At the 
same time a diversion on the Atlantic Coast, 
meeting with only a show of resistance, found 

ii8 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

an apparently unexpected opportunity, for the 
troops marched on Washington, burned the 
White House and some other public buildings, 
and then retired. Nothing of real value was 
accomplished and the only justification for these 
acts was reprisal for previous American mis- 
doings in Canada. Much was expected from the 
third expedition against New Orleans, but it 
was stopped by General Andrew Jackson, who 
proved himself to be a natural and resourceful 
leader of men. In the preceding summer he 
had rallied the men of the Southwest about 
him and defeated the Creek Indians in the 
battle of Horseshoe Bend. For the Americans 
this was one of the most important land events 
of the war, as it resulted in the opening up of a 
large amount of Indian territory greatly wanted 
for settlement. It also made Jackson the hero 
of the Southwest and helped him in raising 
troops a second time, and his victory over 
"Wellington's veterans" at New Orleans In 
January, 1815, added greatly to his laurels. 

Considering the futility of the efforts on both 
sides, it is easy to sympathize with the English- 
man who recorded in his notebook when travel- 
ing in America years after the war was over: — 

After having been on the field of some of these 
battles, and read the narratives of them, and hav- 
ing contrasted the small numbers of men engaged 
in them with the enormous extent of territory and 
resources of the United States and of Britain, they 

119 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

reminded me of nothing but two furious women 
scratching each other's cheeks and tearing each 
other's hair. They bore no reasonable relation to 
the only conceivable object of war, that of com- 
pelling either nation to yield. 

The naw ^^ ^^^ ^^^' ^^^""^ ^^^^ vjere sup- 
posed to be despicably weak, the 
Americans, to every one's surprise, were won- 
derfully successful. That is to say, in the naval 
duels which were the custom of the time, the 
Americans were generally victorious. This was 
due to the excellent sailing qualities of their 
ships, and to the character and ability of their 
sailors and commanders, but primarily to the fact 
that of ships of the same class and nominally 
equal, the American vessels were in almost 
every case superior in guns and in tonnage. 
This should not diminish the credit of inflict- 
ing defeats upon the hitherto invincible British 
navy, and it certainly did not lessen the glory 
of the achievement at the time. It not only 
atoned for the ignominious failure of the inva- 
sions of Canada, but for Americans it left a 
glamour over the War of 1812 which persists 
even to this day. The naval victories were 
astounding and greatly to the credit of the 
United States, but the superior weight and 
strength of the British navy produced its in- 
exorable result. The ships of the little Ameri- 
can navy were one by one captured or driven 
to seek permanent refuge in harbors, so that 

120 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

in a little over a year the American flag on all 
national vessels practically disappeared from 
the ocean. American privateers were carrying 
on their legalized piracy with great profit to 
some of their owners; they were able to inflict 
considerable damage upon British commerce, 
and so to raise the rates of insurance, but they 
did not strike any real blow at the enemy. The 
British, on the other hand, with their superior 
navy, were able to establish a blockade of the 
American coast which was just as effective as 
they cared to make it. Legitimate American 
commerce was cut off entirely except where, for 
reasons of policy, the British were disposed to 
be lenient. 
_ ^. J It has often been said, and truly, 

Convention ^^^* ^^^ ^^ ^^ most remarkable 
things about the War of 1812 was 
the opposition to it in the United States. In 
1807 the Americans would have been united 
in a war against England, but in 181 2 they 
were divided In sentiment, and the Madison 
Administration could not or did not handle 
the situation effectively. Differences grew 
into dissension, and sectional opposition grew 
into or approached treason. In Federalist New 
England trading with the enemy was a regular 
practice, so well recognized that the British, 
in establishing their blockade, exempted New 
England from It, and Madison referred to this 

121 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

fact in his messages to Congress. The exaspera- 
tion of the New Englanders had been growing 
ever since the embargo in 1807. They had op- 
posed the declaration of war as unjustifiable 
and as an act of the rankest folly. They 
thwarted the Administration in the prosecution 
of the war in various ways, and late in 181 4 
delegates from several of the New England 
states planned what was popularly supposed 
to be a separation of their section from the 
Union. Whatever may have been said or 
thought in or outside of the Hartford Con- 
vention, the records show only a denunciation 
of the Administration, a declaration of princi- 
ples like that of the Kentucky and Virginia 
Resolutions of 1798, and a proposal to amend 
the Federal Constitution — characteristic acts 
of a disgruntled party or of a section out of 
power. The commissioners formally appointed 
to carry the protest to Washington reached 
there only to be greeted with the news that the 
war was over. 

If the War of 1 812 was a misfortune 
^"® , in its inception, it was equally un- 
Ghent fortunate in its ending. Peace was 

a blessing, but It saw none of the 
things accomplished for which the war had 
been fought. In 18 14 the causes of war disap- 
peared, as the stopping of the European con- 
flict brought an end to all questions of neutral 

122 



LIBERAL GOVERNMENT 

trade, and the British were no longer under the 
necessity of resorting to impressment for the 
maintenance of their navy. Negotiations for 
peace were begun immediately after war had 
been declared, and so when the causes for war 
were removed there was no reason why peace 
should not be made. Accordingly the com- 
missioners arrived at Ghent in August, 1814, 
and they were able to sign a treaty of peace 
before the end of the year. In fact, the battle 
of New Orleans was fought after the treaty had 
been signed. 

Although it settled none of the questions 
on account of which the war had been fought, 
the Treaty of Ghent is an all-important docu- 
ment because it marked the beginning of over a 
hundred years of peace between the two great 
English-speaking nations. Growing out of it 
came the determination of the boundary line 
between Canada and the United States, to- 
gether with an agreement that it should not be 
fortified, and that there should even be disarm- 
ament on the Great Lakes. Thereby an exam- 
ple was set for the world of the possibilities of 
such a policy, which has only been strengthened 
by its undeniable success. .> 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Of the general histories Edward Channing's fourth volume 
(19 1 7) contains the best account of this period and super- 
sedes his The Jeffersonian System (1906). But this does not 

123 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

dispense with the brilliant piece of historical writing already 
referred to in the text, Henry Adams, History of the United 
States, 1801-1817 (9 vols., 1889-1891), which will long remain 
the standard authority, especially so far as diplomatic events 
are concerned. Of equal importance are the studies of Rear- 
Admiral, then Captain, Alfred T. Mahan, The Infltience of 
Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 17QJ-1812 
(2 vols., 1894), and Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 
1812 (2 vols., 1905). K. C. Babcock, The Rise of Ameri- 
can Nationality (1906), contains a well-balanced but rather 
conventional treatment of the period. 

Jefferson is so important a figure of these years that his life 
and writings are essential. Channing has an excellent biblio- 
graphical note on this subject at the end of chapter ix, and 
his statement may well be accepted that James Schouler's 
biography of Thomas Jefferson (1893) "perhaps best ex- 
presses the man." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW AMERICA 

The War of 1 812 may well be taken as the turn- 
ing-point in the history of the United States; 
not that the war itself was so important, but 
the attending circumstances mark the begin- 
ning of a new era. 

First of all an important change 
people ^^^ taken place in the people them- 

selves. Immigration had practically 
ceased forty years before, at the beginning of 
the fighting between Great Britain and her col- 
onies; it may have revived temporarily with 
peace, but if so it must have been checked by 
the European wars. No accurate records were 
kept, but the estimates in later Census Reports 
show numbers so small as to be negligible, the 
increase in population from immigration being 
not more than one tenth or even one twentieth 
of one per cent a year. Furthermore, the im- 
portation of slaves had been largely stopped by 
the voluntary action of the individual states, 
and then entirely prohibited by the Federal 
Government in 1807. 

These conditions gave the necessary oppor- 
tunity for the forces of assimilation to work, 
among which a steady natural increase of the 

125 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

population, undisturbed by foreign immigra- 
tion, and the busy, prosperous, and contented 
state of the people were important. Accord- 
ingly, in the course of forty years the foreign 
elements in the United States seem to have 
been so largely absorbed that for the first time 
there arose an American people with something 
like a national spirit, and displaying many 
traits that have come to be known as Ameri- 
can ; there seemed almost to be a distinct phys- 
ical type discernible. The War of 1812 had re- 
vealed a people sadly divided as to the wisdom 
or justice of the war, but it was a difference 
of sections and of sectional interests rather 
than of racial or national strains. Even with 
public opinion divided, this war was no excep- 
tion to the rule that war stimulates patriotism, 
and in this the early naval successes and Jack- 
son's victory at New Orleans had done their 
part by arousing enthusiasm and pride. 

One of the strong nationalizing forces was 
the westward movement of population with 
its mingling and mixing of classes and races on 
the frontier, but that migration was of equal 
importance in other ways by its very extent 
and size. The flood of settlers that broke across 
the mountains at the close of the Revolution 
had never slackened; in fact, it steadily in- 
creased in volume. By 1810 there were 1,500,- 
000 people on the Western waters; and in 1820, 

126 



THE NEW AMERICA 

out of a total population in the United States 
of 9,500,000, nearly one third, or over 3,000,000, 
were in the West. Population west of the Alle- 
ghenies not merely relatively but actually in- 
creased more rapidly than the population of 
the rest of the United States. The condition 
thereby created is all-important in understand- 
ing the New America, and especially its indus- 
trial and commercial situation. 
I d <5trv '^^^ Embargo of 1 807 and the 
Jeffersonian policy of peaceful coer- 
cion through commercial restrictions were re- 
sponsible for a great increase in manufactur- 
ing in the United States. There had always 
been a large amount of household manufac- 
tures in America, even in colonial times; but 
since the introduction of cotton machinery 
in 1789 by Samuel Slater, and especially when 
the spread of these factories was hastened by 
the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, there 
had been a gradual transfer of industry from 
the household or small shop to the factory. 
Then came a sudden stimulus from the em- 
bargo, which was strengthened by the fact that 
it was supported as a national measure, so that 
instead of importing foreign goods it became a 
mark of patriotism to use those of domestic 
manufacture. 

One of the popular ways of supporting the 
embargo was by wearing home-made cloth- 

127 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ing. In spite of all the efforts of such men as 
Washington and Colonel David Humphreys, 
and even of agricultural societies, there was 
little fine wool produced in the country, so 
that Americans were dependent upon outside 
sources both for their supply of raw wool and 
for woolen manufactures. An emergency had 
now arisen where supplying home demands 
was a patriotic necessity. In 1808 a British 
secret agent in the United States reported to 
the Lieutenant-Governor of Halifax: — 

The President had a great Levy on the 4th of 
July, and as another Tub to the Whale, he had on 
a Homespun Coat. To hear the Talk about this 
Coat at Washington and Georgetown would lead 
to the supposition, that these silly people supposed 
there was a sort of magic in it, which would work 
the ruin of the Manufacturers of Great Britain. 

President Madison at his inauguration set 
a similar example; he was spoken of as *"a 
walking argument for the encouragement of 
the manufacture of native wool.' His coat had 
been made on the farm of Colonel Humphreys, 
and his waistcoat and small clothes on that of 
Chancellor Livingston, all from the wool of 
merino sheep raised in the country." 

The ultimate result of all this was an insist- 
ent demand for a greater supply of finer grades 
of wool, and a consequent improvement in the 
breed of sheep, until wool-growing and wool- 

I2g 



THE NEW AMERICA 

manufacturing became an important industry 
in the United States. And this is only one 
illustration of what was taking place in other 
directions as well, for the rapid development of 
manufactures was made possible by the in- 
creased capital that had accrued from the 
neutral trade. When a restrictive commercial 
policy was adopted, new outlets for the use 
of capital had to be found and, as a patriotic 
service was thereby rendered, factories became 
a favored form of investment. The moment the 
war was over, however, European manufac- 
tured goods poured into the United States to 
such an extent that these infant industries were 
threatened with extinction, and the men who 
had forced the declaration of war now recog- 
nized their responsibility in the changed state 
of affairs. Accordingly, among the earliest 
measures passed after the war was a new tariff 
act which is commonly regarded as the first 
protective tariff in the United States, because 
protection, having been a minor element in the 
previous acts, now became a major purpose and 
of increasing importance in comparison with 
revenue. It may be regarded as the last step 
toward establishing manufactures in the United 
States, and therewith the country was passing 
out of the age of homespun and into the age of 
machinery. 



129 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Significant as this development may 
growing have been, it probably was not the 
most important phase of the trans- 
formation taking place in the United States. 
Where so many and such great changes were 
occurring it is difficult to choose any one 
in preference to another, but it seems as if 
the fundamental factor in precipitating other 
changes at this time was the increase in cotton- 
growing and its spread into the Southwest. 
The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had 
made profitable the growing of upland or short 
staple cotton; so immediate were its effects 
that before 1800 cotton had surpassed tobacco, 
as the leading crop of the South, and by 181 6 
it was nearly double the latter in value. For 
the growing of this staple more land was needed, 
and the fertile lands of western Georgia, Ala- 
bama, and Mississippi were greatly wanted. 
Therein lies the explanation of most of the In- 
dian troubles in the South, and of the tremen- 
dous popularity of Jackson's victory over the 
Creeks, already referred to, which resulted in the 
cession of a large amount of Indian lands. As fast 
as any such territory was opened up it was rapidly 
taken by the whites for cotton production. 
Slavery '^^^ subject of cotton-growing in- 
evitably leads to the consideration 
of slavery, for the two were closely connected. 
Even at the present day labor is the most im- 

130 



THE NEW AMERICA 

portant element in the cost of cotton produc- 
tion, and whether or not cotton can be grown 
successfully with white labor is irrelevant, for 
in the early eighteenth century it was not 
believed possible, at least in the South. Negro 
labor was regarded as essential, and slavery 
was the legal system adjusting the relations of 
the negroes and their employers. In the next 
place, negro labor attained its greatest effi- 
ciency when organized and handled in gangs, 
and so the tendency was to concentrate on 
plantations and to specialize in the production 
of crops. It was the spread of the plantation 
system — some would say the spread of cotton- 
growing, but the two were almost synonymous 
— that changed the attitude of the South on 
the subject of slavery. Thirty years before 
this, leading men of that section, such as 
Washington and Jefferson, had regarded slav- 
ery as only a temporary evil. But the increase 
of cotton-growing, with its apparent necessity 
of negro labor, seemed to fasten slavery on the 
South ; at any rate, the spread of cotton culture 
into the Southwest was accompanied by a 
corresponding spread of slavery. Furthermore, 
it was a different slavery from that of the old 
patriarchal system in Virginia, for it was com- 
mercialized. It was also the spread of cotton- 
growing and of the plantation system to the 
upland region that united the different sections 

131 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the South in a common economic interest, 
out of which came later the "Solid South." 
And finally it was the expansion of slavery that 
aroused the North and first brought the slavery 
question to the fore. 

It is easy to write diatribes against the insti- 
tution of slavery ; but in the early nineteenth 
century it was considered to be a part of the 
established order. Cruelty to slaves was re- 
garded very much as cruelty to animals is at 
the present time and seems to have been one 
of the main reasons for opposition to the slave 
trade. But the right of holding negroes in servi- 
tude was not generally regarded as debatable; 
for most people, it was not a moral question. 
Slavery had been practically universal in the 
colonies, but it did not work well in the North 
and so it was gradually abolished in New Eng- 
land and as far south as Pennsylvania, until 
the boundary of that state, which had been 
surveyed by Mason and Dixon and was known 
by their names, became the accidental dividing 
line between slave and free in the East. As for 
the West, the Ordinance of 1787 had prohib- 
ited slavery northwest of the Ohio River, but 
when the Ordinance was extended over terri- 
tories in the South that provision was omitted. 
Accordingly the Ohio River became the contin- 
uation of the Mason and Dixon line beyond 
the Allegheny Mountains. 

132 



THE NEW AMERICA 

When the slavery question arose In 

The Mis- ^Yie United States it was not at all 
soun Com- , , , . . r ^ i 

promise over the abohtion of slavery, but 

over the extension of slavery Into 
the new territories which were opening up in 
the West, especially in the Louisiana Purchase. 
It sprang out of the antagonism of interests 
between two sections of the country caused 
by the fact that in one section negro labor in 
the form of slavery lay at the foundation of the 
whole industrial and social structure and in 
the other It did not. The State of Louisiana 
Itself was so far to the south that it was ad- 
mitted Into the Union In 1812 without any 
difficulty arising on the subject of slavery; 
but when Missouri was ready for admission 
the case was different. The new state was 
opposite the mouth of the Ohio River and so 
on a debatable line, while conditions were 
different In 1819 from what they had been a 
few years before. The matter was finally 
settled by the well-known Missouri Compromise 
in 1820, according to which Missouri itself 
was allowed to come Into the Union with 
slavery, but all other states north of the con- 
tinuation of her southern boundary line should 
be free. 

The opposition of the North to the extension 
of slavery was an Important fact, but equally 
significant was the changed attitude toward 

133 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the institution on the part of the South. In 
1785 Jefferson had hoped and beHeved that 
slavery would come to an end in his section. 
At the time of the Missouri Compromise, 
1820, while he would have been glad to see 
general emancipation, he qualified his state- 
ment: "But as it is, we have the wolf by the 
ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely 
let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self- 
preservation in the other." 

As already noticed, the tendency of 
commerce Southerners was to devote their 

plantations to producing a few 
staple crops which necessitated their obtaining 
food and other needed supplies from outside 
sources. The Northwest was a great region 
from which the South drew farming products, 
and whereas the Southerners had formerly 
raised large quantities of live-stock, now they 
imported their horses, mules, cattle, and hogs 
from Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as from 
states farther north and west. Both the North- 
west and the South looked to New England and 
the Middle States for manufactured goods, and 
those sections in turn called upon the Northwest 
for foodstuffs and upon the South for such of 
its products as they could use. In this inter- 
change of commodities it was of great advan- 
tage that the South could dispose of its surplus 
cotton at a profit, because of the great de- 

134 



THE NEW AMERICA 

mand from England and from Europe after 
1815. 

The substance of the whole matter Is that 
the United States was developing, for the first 
time to any considerable extent, domestic 
commerce Involving specialization of sections. 
Speaking broadly, different sections were de- 
voting themselves to certain classes of products 
or of Industries, and were exchanging their 
wares. It meant a division of labor between the 
planters of the South, the farmers of the North, 
and the manufacturers of the East; and it 
meant the development of an important trade 
between those sections, greater in amount and 
more lucrative than the old colonial commerce 
or even than the neutral trade had been. 

In a recent article. Professor Turner has 
written that "The frontier and the section are 
two of the most fundamental factors in Ameri- 
can history " ; and again, that "Sections are more 
important than states in shaping the underly- 
ing forces of American history." It may well be 
that an appreciation of the strength of section- 
alism is essential to a correct understanding of 
the development of the United States, but a 
greater force than sectionalism was here at 
work. Internal commerce was an all-Impor- 
tant factor in developing nationality. This is 
what the economists have in mind when they 
say that the United States was at this time 

135 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

passing out of its colonial condition, that is, 
out of a condition of industrial dependence. 
The Americans still had to look abroad for 
markets for some of their surplus products and 
for the purchase of some manufactured arti- 
cles; but they were increasingly conscious of 
the fact that, for the first time in their history, 
they were becoming industrially and commer- 
cially more and more sufficient unto them- 
selves. They were able to supply an increasing 
proportion of the raw materials they needed 
and of the manufactured goods as well. It was 
not merely national enthusiasm aroused by the 
war; there was a new consciousness of genuine 
national completeness. 

In the year of the embargo, another 
steamboat ^^^^^^ of equal importance occurred, 

— and few saw any connection, — 
Robert Fulton demonstrated the possibility of 
successfully using steam in water transporta- 
tion for commercial purposes, by running the 
Clermont from New York to Albany. Not long 
afterwards, in 1811, the building of a steam- 
boat on the Ohio River opened a new chapter 
in the history of the West ; the era of upstream 
navigation had begun. Without such assist- 
ance it does not seem possible that internal 
commerce could have developed in the United 
States ; and certainly not in the way in which 
it did. When two to three million people were 



THE NEW AMERICA 

living west of the Allegheny Mountains, and 
offered the markets which Eastern manufac- 
turers were seeking, the demand for improved 
means of transportation between the sections 
was inevitable and soon became irresistible. It 
was only too evident that the Old National 
Road, opened shortly after the War of 1812 
and largely used, could not supply the needs 
of the time; something more and something 
better must be had. The building of a water- 
way from East to West, which had earlier 
seemed a dream of visionaries, now became an 
apparent necessity. 

. New York unquestionably possessed, 

Canal ^^ ^^^ Mohawk Valley, the easiest 

route for a canal to the West. The 
ground had been surveyed, plans had been 
drawn, and the people of the state, mainly 
through the efforts and enthusiasm of De Witt 
Clinton, had been brought to the point where 
they were ready to undertake the work. But 
the United States Government was also con- 
cerned, for this was a matter of national im- 
portance. It was proposed that the bonus re- 
ceived from the United States Bank, together 
with the profits derived from the Government 
stock, should be devoted to the improvement 
of transportation and it was understood that 
the New York canal would be a favored proj- 
ect. A bill to that effect passed both houses 

137 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of Congress but, though in sympathy with its 
purpose, President Madison felt obliged, as one 
of the very last acts of his administration, to 
veto it on constitutional grounds. The views 
of his successor, James Monroe, who had been 
Secretary of State, were known to be similar, 
and so if anything was to be done, it must be 
by the state or as a private enterprise. Accord- 
ingly the Erie Canal was begun by the State 
of New York in 1817; it was completed in 1825; 
and the whole course of American development 
was affected. Transportation between Albany 
and Buffalo was reduced to one tenth of its 
former cost, and while the cut in rates could 
not always be as large, freight charges to the 
West everywhere were greatly reduced. This 
lowered the price of manufactured goods in 
practically all the Western country, especially 
in the region reached by the Great Lakes, and 
thereby not only greatly extended the market 
for Eastern manufactures, but ultimately 
brought about the transportation of foodstuffs 
from the West to the East. New York City 
was finally established as the emporium of the 
United States, and not only was the value of 
property along the canal greatly increased but, 
most surprising of all, the canal itself proved 
to be a financial success. The bare enumeration 
of these facts is sufficient to account for the 
similar undertakings in Pennsylvania, Mary- 

138 



THE NEW AMERICA 

land, and even In the South, and for the stimu- 
lus to canal-building all over the country, espe- 
cially in the Northwest. 

With all of these projects before them dis- 
cussions were sure to arise over the interpreta- 
tion of the Constitution as to governmental 
authority. It was not merely a question of 
internal improvements at national expense ; the 
undertakings were going beyond the confines 
of a single state and the powers of the National 
Government were being invoked. It was in 
these years that the Supreme Court, under the 
domination of its Chief Justice, John Marshall, 
handed down some of its most important deci- 
sions, looking toward the extension of the pow- 
ers of the central Government; and among 
these decisions none were more important than 
those involving interstate commerce, in which 
the broad principles were laid down upon which 
practically all interstate commerce decisions 
have since been rendered. It is no wonder that 
there should come a demand just at this time 
for printing the journal of the convention which 
framed the Constitution of the United States, 
in order that as much as possible should be 
known of what was and what was not within 
the power of the Federal Government. 

Enough has been given to show why the 
War of 1 8 12 is justly referred to as the "second 

139 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

war of independence," for it marks the real 
beginning of freedom from industrial and com- 
mercial dependence upon Great Britain and 
Europe. It is of even greater consequence that 
for the first time in the history of the United 
States the people of the Atlantic Coast appre- 
ciated the importance to them of the West and 
that they were willing to recognize it. Therein 
lies the significance of the saying that the people 
of the East, turning their backs on Europe, 
faced squarely around and looked toward the 
West. 

. The independent and new national 

relations spirit of Americans was manifesting 
itself in other directions and no- 
where more markedly than by an increased 
vigor and strength in foreign affairs. When a 
commercial dispute arose in 1816 with two 
Canadian provinces, and an effort was made 
to force the carrying of certain products to 
American ports in British vessels only, the 
United States, instead of submitting, promptly 
prohibited the importation of these products 
altogether, and the Canadians yielded. It was 
a matter of minor importance, but it was re- 
garded as a triumph over Great Britain, be- 
cause it was believed to be a declaration that 
Americans were strong enough to carry out a 
policy of retaliation against a great commercial 
power. And so John Quincy Adams could 

140 



THE NEW AMERICA 

write in his diary that while it was "upon a 
very insignificant subject ... it was one of the 
most significant acts" of the United States 
"since the Declaration of Independence." 
-_ It was an assertion of this same 

Doctrine nationahsm that underlay and gave 
strength to the Monroe Doctrine. 
During the Napoleonic Wars, especially after 
the establishment of Joseph Bonaparte upon 
the throne of Spain, the long-existing discon- 
tent in the Spanish colonies of Central and 
South America had culminated in revolution, 
and in the course of a few years all except Cuba 
and Porto Rico had established their independ- 
ence. Great Britain took advantage of the situ- 
ation to develop trade relations with the newly 
independent states, and while not recognizing 
the independence of the Spanish-American 
republics, she had declared neutrality. The 
interests of the United States were similar to 
those of the British, but American sympathy 
was more fully aroused. There was a general 
belief among Americans, stimulated by the 
propaganda of one Francisco de Miranda, a 
"flaming Son of Liberty," that the independ- 
ence of Spanish America was merely a contin- 
uation and development of the independence 
which the United States had established, and 
it therefore appealed to American ideals and to 
American pride. 

141 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Action would have come much earlier if it 
had not been that negotiations were under way 
for the transfer of the Floridas from Spain. 
Ultimate ownership in the United States was 
inevitable, which Spain was brought to realize, 
and a treaty for that purpose was signed in 
1 819. Owing to various complications, ratifica- 
tion of the treaty was delayed in both Spain and 
the United States, so that it was not finally com- 
pleted until March, 1822, and then President 
Monroe immediately recommended to Congress 
the recognition of the South American republics. 

When the restoration of conditions in Europe 
was under way, France had been entrusted 
with the reestablishment of the monarchy in 
Spain, and had successfully carried out her 
measures. It was also planned to restore the 
Spanish colonies to their former dependence, 
but this was not regarded with approval either 
in England or in the United States. Another 
factor entering into the situation was a result 
of Russian aggressiveness on the western coast 
of North America, which manifested itself in 
an effort to enlarge the boundaries of Alaska, 
whereby a protectorate would have been estab- 
lished over a large area on the Pacific Coast. 
As this could not be accepted quietly by Great 
Britain and the United States, the two coun- 
tries here also were working in harmony. 

It was no new idea which was put forward, 

142 



THE NEW AMERICA 

as it had been developing for a long time; nor 
was it the work of any one man. It may have 
lain in Washington's mind, Jefferson expressed 
it plainly, while Henry Clay and John Quincy 
Adams can be immediately connected with its 
formulation. Whatever its authorship and 
origin may have been, it was in a message to 
Congress in 1823 that the President of the 
United States gave expression to what has 
ever since been known as the Monroe Doctrine. 
In explaining foreign relations President Mon- 
roe described the Russian situation on the 
Pacific Coast, declaring that the matter was 
being handled successfully in the ordinary 
diplomatic way ; he stated that a similar result 
had been achieved in negotiations between 
Russia and Great Britain; and then added that 
the occasion seemed proper for "asserting, as 
a principle in which the rights and interests 
of the United States are involved, that the 
American continents, by the free and inde- 
pendent condition which they have assumed 
and maintain, are henceforth not to be con- 
sidered as subjects for future colonization by 
any European powers." 

After taking up several other matters In his 
message, the President came to South American 
affairs, and stated : — 

In the wars of the European powers, in matters 
relating to themselves, we have never taken any 

143 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. 
. . . The poHtical system of the allied powers is 
essentially different from that of America. This 
difference proceeds from that which exists in their 
respective governments. And to the defence of our 
own, . . . this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, 
therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations 
existing between the United States and those pow- 
ers, to declare, that we should consider any attempt 
on their part to extend their system to any portion 
of this hemisphere, as dangerous to our peace and 
safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies 
of any European power, we have not interfered, and 
shall not interfere. But with the governments who 
have declared their independence, and maintained 
it, and whose independence we have, on great con- 
sideration, and on just principles, acknowledged, 
we could not view any interposition for the purpose 
of oppressing them, or controlling, in any other 
manner, their destiny, by any European power, 
in any other light than as the manifestation of an 
unfriendly disposition towards the United States. 
... It is impossible that the allied powers should 
extend their political system to any portion of either 
continent, without endangering our peace and hap- 
piness. 

The Monroe Doctrine marks the coming of 
age of the United States, when that country, 
for the first time, was able to command the 
respect of Europe. It makes no difference that 
the declaration might not have been effective 
had it not been known that it was supported by 
Great Britain and backed by the British fleet. 
Whatever the extraneous circumstances may 
have been, the United States said to Europe 

144 



THE NEW AMERICA 

"Hands off!" and the European powers ob- 
served the injunction. To the people of the 
United States, aside from the pride they took 
in the position their country had assumed, the 
appeal of the Monroe Doctrine was a double 
one: It realized their ideal of themselves as 
leaders in the cause of liberty, and the prac- 
tical value of "America for the Americans" 
was perfectly evident. Even the indefinite 
character of the doctrine has proved to be one 
of its greatest assets, as it has been possible in 
a crisis to employ it in unexpected ways. It is 
an interesting process of development, that the 
difference in political systems, upon which 
action was justified in 1823, is hardly valid 
now; whereas an almost incidental declaration 
in connection with Russia, that no future colo- 
nization could be permitted, has become the 
important feature. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

There is not much to be added to the bibliographical notes 
of previous chapters. Although the books on the subjects 
of slavery and the Monroe Doctrine are innumerable, some are 
of little value and many are not of general interest. F. J. 
Turner, The Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 (1906), is the 
best single volume covering the period, and contains an ex- 
cellent account of the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine. 
A. C. Coolidge, The United States as a World Power (190S), 
has a very good chapter on the significance of the Monroe 
Doctrine in the light of its subsequent developments. E. L. 
Bogart, Economic History of the United States (2d edition 
1912), becomes increasingly useful from this time on. 

Among the special histories might be noted C. W. Wright, 
Wool Growino and the Tariff (1910), and F. W. Taussig's author- 
itative Tariff History of the United States (of which the 6th 
edition appeared in 1913). 



CHAPTER VII 

DEMOCRACY 

It is evident that a profound change had taken 
place in the United States of which only cer- 
tain external forms have been mentioned here. 
When accompanied as it was by an equally 
great change in the inner life of the people, it 
seems as if almost a transformation of Ameri- 
cans was in process and to follow it is absorb- 
ingly interesting. Perhaps the most striking 
feature was the way in which the practical cast 
of American progress was stamping itself un- 
mistakably upon the things of the spirit. 
Henry Adams, in commenting upon some of 
the different aspects of American character 
after the War of 1 812, wrote with keen appreci- 
ation at the close of his History: "Paradoxical 
as it may seem, it was the pursuit of gain that 
made men more generous, tolerant, and liberal 
in their dealings and their relations with their 
fellow men, and not the teachings of the 
church. As commerce increased its hold that 
of the church relaxed." Conservative church- 
goers were shocked by the unorthodox and 
godless behavior of the mass of the people, 
whereas the liberally inclined insisted that they 
were displaying a more genuine and therefore 

146 



DEMOCRACY 

a more deeply religious spirit. It was a world- 
old difference that was manifesting itself, but 
the turn which it took was indicative of the 
time as well as of American conditions. If 
New England was not the leader it was typical 
of the rest of the country, and there the old 
religious ideas were taking on more of an ethical 
cast, they were becoming more practical, and 
men were turning in the direction of philan- 
thropy and social reform. 

p .... In the political sphere the effect of 

changed conditions had been to 
undermine the old privileged class. The late 
William Graham Sumner has been quoted as 
saying that Americans were not free and equal 
merely because Jefferson put it into the Declara- 
tion of Independence; but Jefferson could put it 
into the Declaration of Independence because 
the economic relations existing in America 
made the members of society to all intents and 
purposes free and equal. But it is necessary 
to go one step farther and to realize that the 
Americans were not free and equal In 1776, 
and that it was not until the generation of 
the Revolution had passed away that oppor- 
tunities were given for the leveling forces in the 
United States to produce their full results. 
Rufus King, who was of the old order, but able 
to recognize and accept the changed situation, 
said to the rising generation: — 

147 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

You young men who have been born since the 
Revolution, look with horror upon the name of a 
King, and upon all propositions for a strong govern- 
ment. It was not so with us. We were born the 
subjects of a King, and were accustomed to sub- 
scribe ourselves "His Majesty's most faithful 
subjects." 

A little later George Combe, who has already 
been quoted to the same effect, finished the 
story : • — 

But the condition of affairs is now changed. The 
generation trained to obedience under monarchical 
institutions is extinct; a race occupies the field which 
has been reared under the full influence of democ- 
racy. 

Josiah Quincy said that it had taken a half- 
century after the Declaration of Independence 
"to reach a vital belief that the people and not 
gentlemen (using the word, of course, in its 
common and narrow sense) are to govern this 
country." 

The old regime had been strongly 
j.^j.y enough entrenched to withstand the 

attacks upon its position for a con- 
siderable time, but the progress of democracy 
was steady and inexorable. Test oaths, reli- 
gious requirements, and property qualifica- 
tions for both office-holding and voting were 
disappearing one after another; representation 
was being apportioned on the basis of the whole 
population rather than on the number of elec- 

148 



DEMOCRACY 

tors or taxpayers ; and the offices were increas- 
ing that were to be filled by popular election 
instead of by appointment of governor or legis- 
lature. The West was in a large measure re- 
sponsible for the way things were turning. 
By 1820 there were nine states beyond the 
Allegheny Mountains out of a total of twenty- 
four, and with the equality of conditions exist- 
ing there, when those states formed their 
constitutions they had taken the lead in extend- 
ing these democratic provisions. This in turn 
reacted upon the older states in the East, both 
by way of example and by actual pressure 
through loss of population, as many citizens 
were leaving because conditions were preferable 
in the West, and one of the attractions was 
political equality. State after state in the East, 
even the most conservative, revised its con- 
stitution. 

^ J- Typical of the old order and of the 

Connecti- j-^- n r^ 

j,^|. new conditions as well was Con- 

necticut. At the time of the Revo- 
lution that state, having enjoyed the greatest 
degree of self-government under her colonial 
charter, was not obliged to frame a new con- 
stitution; she simply continued the charter 
government. The people of the colony and of 
the state were supposed to have control because 
they elected their own governor and both 
houses of the legislature; but by the second 

149 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

decade of the nineteenth century, Connecti- 
cut's government was regarded as essentially 
aristocratic under the control of a privileged 
class. The liberal government of 1776 had 
become antiquated by 1816. Ever since the 
success of the Democratic-Republicans in the 
election of Jefferson to the presidency discon- 
tent in Connecticut had been growing. The 
prospect was so discouraging, however, that 
Pierrepont Edwards, " a leader of the Dem- 
ocrats " in Congress, is said to have exclaimed, 
"As well attempt to revolutionize the kingdom 
of heaven as the State of Connecticut!" Yet 
by 1 81 8 the liberal elements were strong enough 
to force the framing of a new constitution 
which was submitted to the people and adopted. 
While the spread of democratic principles was 
largely due to changing economic conditions, 
the immediate reform in the government of 
Connecticut — and the same would be true of 
other New England states — was brought 
about through a combination of dissenting 
Baptists and Methodists, with the support of 
the Episcopalians, all of whom had a common 
grievance against the Federalist Congregation- 
alist hierarchy. 

Indicative also of the new order of things 
was the submission of Connecticut's constitu- 
tion to popular vote for approval. Massachu- 
setts and New Hampshire ' had adopted this 

150 



,A 



DEMOCRACY 

method at the time of the Revolution, but 
Connecticut was the first to revive the practice. 
Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and even 
Virginia followed suit, and the submission of 
constitutions for popular approval became the 
established order of procedure. 

Undoubtedly the process of democratization 
was helped along by the panic of 1819. A finan- 
cial crisis was a very natural occurrence in the 
process of adjustment to radically new Indus- 
trial conditions, but it was sharp while it lasted 
and distress was widespread. Accordingly, as 
always happens, increased discontent was of 
material assistance in bringing about political 
changes. 

But whatever explanations are offered, they 
cannot detract from the importance of the 
commonly accepted statement that in the 
course of a relatively few years after the War 
of 1812 democracy became an established fact 
in the United States. There is also no doubt 
that most Americans took great pride in it. To 
the eyes of many foreign travelers, however, 
it was not producing attractive results, nor 
did it seem to maintain an efficient govern- 
ment. They might well have quoted Fisher 
Ames: — 

A monarchy Is like a merchantman. You get on 
board and ride the wind and tide in safety and 
elation but, by and by, you strike a reef and go 

151 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

down. But democracy is like a raft. You never 
sink, but, damn it, your feet are always in the water ! ^ 

Yet those same travelers admitted the gen- 
eral happiness and contentment of the people, 
and they commented favorably upon the exten- 
sion of education which followed the widening 
of the suffrage. 

p .. . . The Federalists had been the up- 
parties holders of the old order, and after 

the War of 1812 their party dwin- 
dled away; it was commonly said that they 
died out because of the success of their princi- 
ples in the hands of their opponents. When 
the Democratic-Republicans found themselves 
obliged by the force of circumstances to adopt 
a broad construction of the Constitution, and 
when the Democratic- Republican administra- 
tion proved successful, there was no longer an 
excuse for a party with Federalist principles. 
James Monroe had been a rival of Madison 
for the presidency in 1808, and was regarded 
as his inevitable successor on the latter's retire- 
ment. Accordingly there was little opposition 
to his election in 1816, and whatever opposi- 
tion there was had entirely disappeared in 
1820, so that all the electoral votes with a single 
exception were cast for his reelection, and that 

* Cited by G. M. Wrong, "The Creation of the Federal 
System in Canada," in The Federation of Canada (Toronto, 
1917), p. 21. 



DEMOCRACY 

exception was made for purely sentimental rea- 
sons, one of the electors declaring that no one 
but Washington should have the honor of 
unanimous election. It was the absence of 
party divisions that was mainly responsible for 
calling Monroe's administrations the "Era 
of Good Feelings." 

But the harmonious course of politics was 
not allowed to lapse into monotony, and one 
of the interesting incidents of the spread of 
democracy in America was the manner in 
which the control of affairs formerly exercised 
by leading men was taken away. Originally 
the Influential men of a community had suc- 
ceeded in having their preferences fulfilled 
or their will carried out largely by force of 
character and the strength of their social posi- 
tion. With the development of parties these 
same men would meet together and the word 
would then be spread abroad that the party 
would do thus and so, or that party members 
would vote for such and such candidates. 
As party machinery was built up these groups 
tended to become more and more of an organi- 
zation. It was natural that the leaders of the 
party who were in office should take it upon 
themselves to determine matters of policy, and 
the largest numbers were in the legislature. 
The meetings of the legislative party leaders 
came to be known as caucuses, and so it hap- 

153 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

pened that with the awakening of democracy 
there came a revolt against the domination of 
the caucus. 

. , The revolt was greatly helped by 

Jackson ^^^ presidential elections of 1824 
and 1828. At the end of Monroe's 
second term the fact of there being but one 
party did not mean that every one was in 
accord. Factions within the party were numer- 
ous and so many candidates for the highest 
office arose that only a few months before the 
election a dozen or more names were men- 
tioned; it is commonly known, therefore, as 
the "scrub race for the presidency." As always 
the contest narrowed down to comparatively 
few, and when the campaign was really under 
way only five men could be considered in the 
race. John C. Calhoun withdrew with the 
understanding that he should be made Vice- 
President, but even then no one was able to 
secure a majority of the electoral votes. In 
some states the electors had been chosen by 
popular vote, but in most they were chosen by 
the legislatures. Where the people had voted, 
Andrew Jackson was the favorite, having been 
put forward as the opponent of "the Virginia 
Dynasty," and he also received a larger num- 
ber of electoral votes than any other candidate. 
His supporters felt that on the face of the re- 
turns he should be made President, but the 

154 



DEMOCRACY 

Constitution provided in the contingency of 
no electoral majority that the choice should 
be made by the House of Representatives from 
the "five highest on the list" returned by 
the electoral college. A subsequent amend- 
ment had changed this to the highest three, 
which in this case eliminated Henry Clay, who 
was fourth and would probably have been the 
strongest candidate before the House. The 
third candidate was William Crawford, of 
Virginia, who had been hindered rather than 
helped by receiving the formal nomination of 
the Congressional caucus, and he was now out 
of the running, if for no other reason, because 
of a stroke of paralysis. Accordingly, the 
choice lay between Jackson and John Quincy 
Adams, and as Clay threw his influence to the 
support of the latter Adams was elected. In 
one way, it was unfortunate that Clay accepted 
the office of Secretary of State, regarded as the 
position of the heir apparent, for the cry of cor- 
rupt bargaining was at once raised; and al- 
though no proof could be adduced in support of 
the charge, it put the Adams Administration 
on the defensive from the start. 

No sooner was the question of the presidency 
settled in 1825, than the Jackson men began 
their campaign for the next election, four years 
later. It was not a question of principles, but 
of personalities. It was Jackson against the 

155 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Administration, against Adams and Clay, both 
or either of them. Yet out of this conflict of 
personalities, accidentally as it were, party 
principles developed. Clay championed a pro- 
tective tariff and internal improvements as 
a part of his "American system," and to 
Adams, a former Federalist, such principles 
were altogether congenial. Accordingly the 
Adams and Clay factions joined forces on these 
questions; in opposition to the Democratic- 
Republicans they became National Republi- 
cans, and a few years later they took the name 
of Whigs. 

At the time the question was largely a per- 
sonal one, and yet, although "Hurrah for 
Jackson!" was the rallying cry of the cam- 
paign, there was something more than that and 
more even than the uprising against the old 
order expressed in Jackson's dictum, "Let the 
people rule." Senator Martin Van Buren, 
trained in the New York school of politics 
which was already becoming famous, had 
joined the Jackson forces and was one of what 
would now be called the managers of his cam- 
paign. Just how much credit belongs to him it 
would be difficult to say, but New York meth- 
ods were followed, and back of the enthusiasm 
of the campaign was organization, to which 
much of Jackson's overwhelming success in 
1828 must be attributed. It was a victor>'^ of 

156 



DEMOCRACY 

the South and West, especially of the latter; 
it was a victory for democracy ; but it was also 
a victory of organized politics. 

Organization required workers and 
sion^^ooli- ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ been successful those 
ticians workers demanded their reward. 

Accordingly, with the inauguration 
of Jackson we see the "spoils system," the 
giving of Government offices to successful 
party workers, frankly adopted by the Federal 
Administration. It was merely an application 
to the national field on a large scale of what 
long had been the practice locally or on a small 
scale, but it seems to mark the rise of a class of 
professional politicians. These men were not 
like the old ruling class whose members were 
in politics largely from a sense of duty and 
public service, or for the honor of it, or even 
for the sake of power; but they were in politics 
as a business, not for the irregular profits to be 
derived therefrom, but to make a living. 

The Marquis de Lafayette has always stood 
to Americans as the embodiment of the French 
aid that enabled them to win their independ- 
ence and, when he made his triumphal return 
to the United States in 1824, he was interested 
and amused at the greetings of his fellow vet- 
erans of the Revolution. "What do you think," 
he said, "is the question which these Revolu- 
tionary soldiers almost invariably ask me? It 

157 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

is this, 'What do you do for a living?' and 
sometimes the inquiry comes, 'What was 
your father's business?'" Upon which Josiah 
Quincy commented, " Now, everybody is work- 
ing for a living in America, — that is, pursu- 
ing some money-getting trade or profession, — ■ 
and the people do not understand how it can 
be otherwise in the older countries." The 
salient American trait so vividly portrayed in 
this anecdote not only lies at the very founda- 
tion of American life and character, but offers 
an explanation of the course that politics took 
in the United States. 

It is becoming customary to ascribe the 
development of the nervous, hurried energy of 
the American people to the period after the 
War of 1 812. Whether one accepts this or 
traces its origin farther back in earlier effects 
of a stimulating climate, all can agree that the 
Americans at this time were a busy people, 
absorbed in their work. When the first enthu- 
siasm of overthrowing the caucus had passed, 
it was only human nature, but it was also char- 
acteristic of them, that Americans were un- 
willing to bother with politics except to vote, 
and that they were glad to have matters man- 
aged for them. And so there were two classes 
of men: those interested in business and a 
smaller class interested in politics; or it might 
be said that all were interested in business only 

158 



DEMOCRACY 

some were making a business of politics. It is 
a fact to be remembered at every stage of Amer- 
ican history from that day to this. 

The influence of the West upon the 

T fl 

f th ^^*'^ growth of democracy has been shown 
■^est ^^'^ ^t was responsible, to an equal 

extent, for the distinguishing char- 
acter of certain other changes that were tak- 
ing place. There was a geographic as well as 
a political and social force. The Federalists 
as a class had been pro-British in sympathy; 
indeed, they were allied in many cases by 
financial interests and family ties, so that Eng- 
lish social ideals had dominated in the United 
States. Under the new conditions Americans 
were freeing themselves from outside influences, 
they were progressing in their own way, and 
the farther west they went the more independ- 
ent was their development. Emerson could 
write in 1844: "Europe stretches to the Alle- 
ghenies; America lies beyond." Lord Bryce, 
in The American Commonwealth, has said that 
"The West may be called the most distinctly 
American part of America, because the points 
in which it differs from the East are the points 
in which America as a whole differs from 
Europe." 

No more striking illustration of the pecul- 
iarly American character of this development 
can be found than that pointed out by Presi- 

159 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

dent Hadley: "Men with a hundred and sixty 
acres of land were not lil^:ely to pass laws which 
would interfere with the rights of property, 
and particularly of landed property. . . . The 
immigrant found it easy to get land; he found 
it hard to get capital." Expansion of democ- 
racy in the United States was accompanied by 
the protection of property rights and by the 
encouragement of capital. 

In the things of the spirit also this 
traits influence was manifest. Liberty, 

equality, and opportunity were fun- 
damental in American life. They were essen- 
tial in the establishment of American democ- 
racy, and when combined with other elements 
it seems as if many of the characteristics that 
have come to be known as American were 
being revealed in the period under considera- 
tion, that is, in the second generation after the 
Revolution. At the basis lay the qualities 
of bravery, resourcefulness, and self-reliance, 
which were indispensable to the maintenance 
of life upon the frontier, and all America passed 
through the frontier stage. Adaptability was 
a product rather than an original quality. 

Quite early one finds contemporary com- 
ments upon the spirit of gambling in the 
United States, but gaming was prevalent the 
world over and does not describe the passion 
which animated, and still animates, the Amer- 

i6o 



DEMOCRACY 

ican people. The very opportunities that were 
offered in the new country led to recklessness. 
Failure was not disastrous. It only meant be- 
ginning over again, and men grew accustomed 
to taking chances. Some foreign observers were 
discerning enough to see that Americans en- 
joyed the contest; they loved the game; and 
they also played the game to win. One of the 
shrewdest characterizations ever made was 
that an American likes better than anything 
else to make a dollar where no one else has seen 
the chance or where somebody else has failed. 
Franz Loher commented upon the fact that 
every American had a business, whether he 
were a clergyman, a lawyer, a physician, or a 
tradesman, at which he worked unceasingly. He 
was writing in 1847, but he was able then to say 
that nothing was farther from the truth than 
that love of money was the object of this tireless 
effort. Nowhere else did they give so much to 
schools and churches and charitable institutions. 
Wealth meant power, but it was chiefly prized 
as the proof and the emblem of success. 

It is easy to see how out of the conditions 
existing other traits developed such as cheer- 
fulness, good-nature, generosity, and above all 
a deeply rooted belief in an opportunity for 
every man, a conviction which ultimately led 
to the principle of fair play and the doctrine of 
the square deal. 

161 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Still other characteristics sprang from the 
youthfulness of the people; as a nation they 
were young, but individually they were young 
also. The men and women who were colonizing 
the West and building there the American 
Nation were young in years; they were filled 
with hope and with enthusiasm. Even foreign 
immigration was composed "neither of single 
men, nor of old people, nor of middle-aged 
people dragging children along with them, but, 
for the most part, of young couples seeking a 
new home, fondly encouraging each other, 
strong in health and spirits, not driven from 
birthplace by the fear of want, but attracted 
to a new place by motives of ambition for them- 
selves and for children to come." ^ 

A sense of humor is conspicuous in American 
temperament, and whether it comes from an 
appreciation of the incongruous, or from scorn 
for any lack of adaptability, from a "magnifi- 
cent spirit of exaggeration," from a surplus of 
nervous energy seeking relief, or from any 
other of the numerous explanations, the neces- 
sary conditions seemed to exist in the new 
country. Boisterous and rough in those early 
years, time has served to soften and refine 
American humor, and apparently without 
weakening it to any extent. A similar process 
of refinement was going on in the manners of 

1 E. G. Wakefield, View of the Art of Colonization (1849). 
162 



DEMOCRACY 

the American people which unquestionably 
were deficient in early days. Yet de Tocque- 
ville saw that equality of conditions in the 
United States was certain, in the course of time, 
to increase civility and to improve manners, 
because the basis of all good manners was there 
in the respect for others simply as men and 
women irrespective of class. 

But equality was not an unmixed blessing, 
even to such a sympathetic critic as de Tocque- 
ville, for he also wrote: "When I survey this 
countless multitude of beings shaped in each 
others likeness, amidst whom nothing rises and 
nothing falls, the sight of such universal uni- 
formity saddens and chills me." Apparently 
Carlyle was impressed in the same way when 
he gave vent to the sarcasm: "They have be- 
gotten, with a rapidity beyond recorded exam- 
ple, eighteen millions of the greatest bores ever 
seen in the world before — that hitherto is their 
feat in History." 

The haste with which things were done led, 
of course, to superficiality; many critics men- 
tion it; and the difference in the point of 
view is of almost equal significance. Foreign- 
ers, and especially Englishmen, asked why 
bridges were built of wood instead of stone, and 
the question amused as well as interested 
Americans. It was this same haste, however, 
that stimulated the American genius for in- 

163 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ventlon through the exercise of his ingenuity 
in devices for saving time and labor. 

The Americans might have been superficial, 
but they were serious in their purposes. 

Especially the Americans have great earnestness 
of character; ... I think I have never seen more of 
it in any people. Their character, like their climate, 
has great decision about it; it may be hot, it may 
be cold; but when it is cold it freezes, and when it 
is hot it burns. "^ 

They were idealists, too, and in its own way 
the West again played an important part. In 
the words of Professor Turner: — 

The Western man believed in the manifest des- 
tiny of his country. . . . the frontiersman's dream 
was prophetic. In spite of his rude, gross nature, 
this early Western man was an idealist withal. He 
dreamed dreams and beheld visions. He had faith 
in man, hope for democracy, belief in America's 
destiny, unbounded confidence in his ability to 
make his dreams come true.^ 

If there was a composite type developing it 
was in the Middle West, and it would have 
shown inheritances from every section of the 
country: the ethical religious ideals of New 
England, the social standards of the South, the 
practical and commercial aims of the Middle 
States, and the Western insistence upon 
equality. 

^ Reed and Matheson, Narrative of Visit to the American 
Churches, n (1835), p. 281. 

2 "The Problem of the West," in The Atlantic Monthly, 
September, 1896. 

164 



DEMOCRACY 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Attention has alread^'^ been called to the standard works 
covering the events of this chapter. Most of the material upon 
American characteristics was taken from accounts of travel- 
ers, of which there is a valuable list in the Cambridge History 
of American Literature (Part i, IQ17), but especial reference 
should be made to Alexis C. H. de Tocqueville, De la Democra- 
tie en Amerique (2 vols., Paris, 1835-1840; translated by 
Reeve and by Bowen), which still remains the classical inter- 
pretation of American democracy of that time. The writer 
is also conscious of having used later works with profit, notably, 
A. Maurice Low, The American People (2 vols., 1909-1911); 
Henry van Dyke, The Spirit of America (1912); and Bliss 
Perry, The American Mind (19 12). Professor Perry has set a 
high standard for this type of work in The American Spirit 
in Literature (1918). 

_ The statement with regard to the formation of the Connec- 
ticut Constitution in 1818 was derived from the illuminating 
monograph of Richard J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 
1775-1818 iigiS). 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE JACKSON IAN ERA 

The administrations of Jackson and of his suc- 
cessor, Martin Van Buren, constitute a period 
of twelve years which may well be designated 
by any term which brings out the dominating 
personality of the President. The " Jacksonian 
epoch" and "The reign of Andrew Jackson" 
are frequently used ; but the best description is 
contained in the phrase "Jacksonian Democ- 
racy," because it emphasizes the President's 
influence, and yet recognizes the other great 
element of the new Western democracy. It was 
partly a matter of temperament and person- 
ality, and partly a combination of circum- 
stances that made the Jacksonian epoch a 
stormy period in American politics. The Pres- 
ident personified the West of his time: lack- 
ing in education and refinement, but strong, 
energetic, and courageous. Untrained in ad- 
ministration, surrounded by a set of men who 
were themselves none too wise or experienced, 
unacquainted with and unappreciative of some 
of the larger phases of national development, 
it was inevitable that Jackson and Jacksonian 
democracy should come into conflict with the 
accepted way of doing things. The questions 

1 66 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 

which came to an issue were more or less acci- 
dental. 

The divergence of sectional inter- 

cation " ^^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ most dramatic 
incidents not only of this period 
but of all American history. The protective 
tariff of l8i6 had been followed by others in 
1824 and 1828, each carrying a substantial 
increase in the duties on imports, a result of 
the growing national feeling and nationalistic 
policy. Because of its manufactures the East 
was becoming more and more interested in the 
tariff and also in the establishment of improved 
communications with the West for the sake 
of opening markets, but was opposed to cheap 
land because laboring men were thereby drawn 
away. The West was in favor of a liberal 
land policy, cheap land, and internal improve- 
ments. The South, with its production of sta- 
ple products, was opposed to tariff protec- 
tion; it favored improved communications, but 
was opposed to Federal appropriations for that 
purpose, as it served to dispose of the unneces- 
sary revenues accruing from the high tariff. 
As is usual in such cases, the South justified 
its opposition on constitutional grounds. 

The manufacturing interests of the East and 
the planter interests of the South were thus 
opposed to one another and each was working 
for the support of the West. No section was 

167 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

strong enough to offset a combination of the 
other two. John C. Calhoun, as representative 
of the South, was attempting to form an alli- 
ance with the West by making concessions on 
the subject of greatest concern to that section, 
a more liberal land policy. In an effort to break 
the threatened alliance, Daniel Webster, sen- 
ator from Massachusetts, attacked Robert Y. 
Hayne as champion of the South. This was the 
famous Webster-Hayne debate in 1 830. It arose 
out of a discussion of a harmless enough resolu- 
tion relating to the sale of public lands, at a time 
when the South was apparently making a delib- 
erate bid for Western support, and it seems as 
if Webster, unable to meet that offer, like a 
skillful debater, shifted his ground and attacked 
the South at its weakest point, namely, on the 
assertion of State rights. He accordingly made 
his wonderful plea for a national interpretation 
of the Constitution. The course of events as well 
as the logic of the argument were on the side 
of Webster, although it may well be doubted 
whether Hayne was not historically in the 
right, that is to say, that he more nearly pre- 
sented the interpretation of the Constitution 
as it would have prevailed at the time of its 
framing. But the forces of nationalism had 
brought the United States way beyond Hayne's 
position and it was for the Nation that Webster 
was speaking. 

168 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

This debate occurring before Jackson had 
been in the presidency a year, an opportunity 
was made to test his sentiments on the subject. 
He was supposed to be a believer in State 
rights, whose sympathies were with the South; 
but he was also by nature a fighter and by 
training a military officer, who instinctively re- 
sented any effort to resist orders or to under- 
mine central authority. When called upon at 
a banquet where nullification sentiments had 
been freely expressed, the President gave as 
his toast, in words which became historical, 
"Our Federal Union; It must be preserved!" 
The personality of the President had unexpect- 
edly become a factor. 

Jackson's unexpected opposition checked 
but did not stop the advocates of nullification. 
When the tariff of 1832 lowered duties but still 
maintained the principle of protection, the 
South felt that the time for action had come. 
In a convention composed in the same way as 
the convention which had ratified the Consti- 
tution of the United States, South Carolina 
adopted an Ordinance of Nullification, declar- 
ing the tariff of 1832 inoperative in that state. 
The President was aroused, Congress was 
called into the fight, and nullification was met 
by a threat of force, when Henry Clay relieved 
the situation by putting through the Compro- 
mise Tariff of 1833. South Carolina thereupon 

169 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

withdrew its Ordinance of Nullification, but 
issued another ordinance nullifying the Force 
Act, which was of no practical importance as 
there was now no need of putting it into opera- 
tion. Victory was claimed by both sides, and 
with some reason for, after all, the result was a 
compromise ; Federal authority had been main- 
tained, but the tariff was changed.^ 

A few months later on a tour in New Eng- 
land, Jackson visited one of the towns in 
Massachusetts, where a manufacturing jeweler 
showed him cards and cards of buttons stamped 
with the palmetto tree. These had been or- 
dered by the supporters of nullification and were 
to be worn as distinguishing badges, but they 
had been rendered worthless by the turn of 
events. " The President seemed greatly amused 
at the discovery that treason in South Carolina 
had its commercial value in Massachusetts." 

-^The West had learned to fear a 

The bank central financial institution and the 
contro- 1 1 f • 1 

versy dread of it was as potent then as 

was the Wall Street bogey fifty 

years later. Jackson shared the Western point 

of view and seemed ready to attack, but the 

* It is interesting to note that almost at this same time an 
Indian controversy brought two of the Southern States into 
conflict with Federal authority, and in these cases, apparently 
because of his sympathy with State rights and his lack of 
sympathy with the Indians, Jackson upheld Alabama and 
Georgia in their refusal to abide by decisions of the Federal 
Supreme Court. 

170 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

charter of the United States Bank would not 
expire until 1836, long after the President's 
term of office would have ended. To act under 
such conditions was a delicate matter. It is 
a pity to lose President Wilson's epigram that 
" delicacy did not weigh with Jackson any more 
than the judgments of the Supreme Court," ^ 
but the responsibility must rest with Nicholas 
Biddle, the president of the bank, and with 
Henry Clay, who insisted upon bringing the 
matter to a decision in 1832. A bill for the re- 
newal of the charter was obtained from Con- 
gress, but Jackson vetoed it and made the bank 
the issue of the presidential campaign of 1832. 
Like every other difference of opinion this be- 
came a personal matter with the President, 
and Jackson was a good fighter. When his 
popularity brought him a triumphant reelec- 
tion, he promptly carried the war into the 
enemy's country by ordering that no more 
Government moneys should be deposited in 
the national bank, but that instead they should 
be distributed among various banking institu- 
tions throughout the country. This was in 1833 
and the effects were far-reaching. 

R 'Iro ds '^^^ generation of the War of 18 12 

had witnessed a complete change in 

the character of American industrial develop- 

^ Division and Reunion (1893), p. 73. 
171 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ment. While still adjusting itself to the altered 
conditions another agency entered in which 
further stimulated the new development, but 
also produced some entirely unforeseen re- 
sults. The steam locomotive was tried and 
proved successful. 

The story of early railroading in the United 
States is not very different from that in other 
countries. As everywhere there were many 
amusing incidents connected with the first 
crude engines, track, and rolling stock. For 
example, a race on parallel tracks between a 
horse-car and a locomotive was won by the 
former. When two trains met on a single track, 
one was lifted off by the passengers to let the 
other go by. And nothing could picture con- 
ditions more vividly than the advertisement 
in Philadelphia that "The locomotive engine 
built by M. W. Baldwin of this city, will de- 
part daily when the weather is fair, with a train 
of passengers' cars. On rainy days horses will 
be attached." There was the same, to us 
amazing, inability to appreciate the strength 
of the "force practically let loose suddenly 
upon mankind." The first railroads were ex- 
pected to serve only as feeders for canals or 
as connecting links between water routes, and 
even then there was the inevitable opposition 
that accompanies every improvement. When 
the Boston and Albany Railroad was projected 

172 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

the Boston Courier said that it would be as 
" useless as a railroad from Boston to the 
moon," and a Dorchester town meeting de- 
clared that it would be of " incalculable evil 
to the town generally."^ 

Because of these things it is customary to 
consider the railroad as of little importance 
until a later time. While admitting the sub- 
sequent and greater usefulness, it will not do 
to ignore it in its beginnings. The mere fact 
that with twenty-three miles in 1830 there were 
nearly three thousand miles of railroad built 
in the United States before 1840, and that 
Congress in 1838 made every railroad a postal 
route, may not be overlooked. As a national 
force in binding together the various sections 
of the country the importance of the rail- 
road was not yet felt, although the start was 
made. * 

Its immediate practical use was in transpor- 
tation. Instead of the stage-coach pace of four 
to six miles, life begins to move at the rate of 
fifteen or twenty miles an hour. The railroad 
helped in further concentrating population in 
industrial centers, so that between 1820 and 
1840 the city population increased more than 
twice as fast as did the population as a whole; 
but as an offset to this, one of its most im- 

* Quoted by Howard Elliott, "Address to American Asso- 
ciation of Traveling Passenger Agents," 1915. 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

portant effects in the United States was in as- 
sisting the spread of settlement. 

_, . New England population, as it 

Expansion , , , i , , 

expanded, had moved northward 

into New Hampshire and Vermont, and to some 
extent into Maine, and after the Revolution 
was over it had pushed out into western New 
York. For various reasons, about the time of 
the completion of the Erie Canal, large ele- 
ments of that same population were ready to 
move on to the next stage. Some of the people 
had already gone and had settled the region 
within easy reach of the Great Lakes. If census 
maps showing the distribution of settlement 
are superimposed on maps indicating physical 
features, they reveal that the early comers into 
Indiana and Illinois took up land along the 
streams, and left the land between unoccupied ; 
the toughness of the prairie sod made those 
stretches seem impossible of cultivation, and 
the question of transportation was a serious 
one. Gradually the pressure of population 
forced settlers slowly to encroach upon the 
prairie lands and, once the sod was broken, it 
was found that the soil was unusually fertile. 
Of course, as soon as a real demand came, a 
suitable implement was devised in the shape of 
a stronger plough. 

Here, then, were great areas of land open to 
settlement, they were proving possible of culti- 

174 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 

vation, New Englanders were ready to come, 
and just at that time the railroad arrived. A 
few years later James Stirling wrote: — 

There seems a natural pre-ordained fitness be- 
tween the railway and the prairie; for the prairie 
is as eminently suited to the formation of railways, 
as railways are essential to the development of 
prairies. For hundreds of miles you have only to 
raise the turf, and lay your sleepers; . . . the prairies 
absolutely make their own railways without cost 
to any one. The development of the country by 
means of a railway is such, that what was yester- 
day waste land is to-day a valuable district. There is 
thus action and reaction ; the railway improves the 
land; the improvement pays for the railway.^ 

It is little wonder, therefore, to find a rapid 
expansion of population into the prairie region 
of the Northwest, of which a large percentage 
came from New England by way of New York. 

An additional reason for the westward move- 
ment of population was to be found in the 
increased pressure from foreign immigration. 
In the first forty years under the new govern- 
ment the total immigration was estimated at 
only 365,000, scarcely 9000 a year. But be- 
tween 1830 and 1840 over half a million for- 
eigners entered the country, more than 50,000 
a year, and the total population of the United 
States was much less than 20,000,000. Of 
these immigrants 150,000 were German. Some 
of the newcomers went directly to the West; 

1 Letters from the Slave States (1856). 
175 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

others remained in the East, forcing or making 
it possible for the native inhabitants to go 
West. 

While the prairies were being settled in the 
Northwest the expansion of population into 
the Southwest had been continuing. Only- 
there it was not so much a question of trans- 
portation as of opening new lands for cotton- 
growing. It must be evident what was happen- 
ing: a stream of Southern settlers into the 
Southwest and a stream of Northerners into 
the Northwest forecast a division of the Missis- 
sippi Valley similar to that of the eastern sea- 
board. Before the situation, however, had suffi- 
ciently developed to become acute other things 
occurred of more immediate importance. 

The steady movement of population 
lands '^^^^ *^^ West had brought insistent 

demands for modifications in the 
public land policy. The terms of sale as first 
arranged were probably unrivaled in the world, 
and yet they did not satisfy this people, which 
was, as Calhoun declared, "great and rapidly 
— I was about to say fearfully — growing!" 
Though the encouragement of settlement had 
not been left out of account, the primary pur- 
pose of the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the 
statutes which supplemented it was to obtain 
revenue. Accordingly the land had been offered 
in fairly large tracts. The West demanded that 

176 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 

land should be made more available for settle- 
ment and insisted upon lessening the amount 
which might be sold to an individual, as well 
as upon lowering the price. The process had 
been gradual, but steady, until by an act of 
1820 as small a plot as eighty acres could be 
purchased at the price of $1.25 an acre. 

There were few men who did not have or 
could not obtain at least one hundred dollars 
wherewith to buy eighty acres of land. If the 
tract were in a desirable section its worth must 
be greater than the price paid, and if it were 
rich bottom-land, or if it were chosen for a 
town site and laid out in town lots, its value 
would be greatly enhanced. The one thing 
needed was to realize on the valuation, either 
by sale for cash or by obtaining credit. The 
rise of manufacturing industries was accom- 
panied by the growth of cities and of course 
with an increased value of city lots. The oppor- 
tunity for investment was unusual and the 
chances for speculation were even greater. It 
was at this particular moment that the Presi- 
dent forced his attack on the United States 
Bank by ordering the so-called "removal of 
deposits," and the placing of Government 
moneys in various state banks. These banks 
doubled in number in the course of three or 
four years. Some banks were established to 
receive the Government deposits, some were 

177 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

established for purposes of speculation, some 
were established honestly; but all issued paper 
money. This was the one thing needed to 
let loose speculation. Land which had been 
bought at a hundred dollars might be consid- 
ered as worth ten times as much and would be 
used at one of the "pet banks" as security for 
such an amount. The fortunate individual im- 
mediately invested in still more land, which 
was in turn used as security for further borrow- 
ing. It was a time of boom towns, corner lots, 
speculation and extravagance. That the state- 
ment is not exaggerated is shown by the figures 
for the sale of land. Since the act of 1820 the 
sales had scarcely averaged in value two and a 
quarter million dollars a year. The "removal 
of deposits" began in 1833, and in 1835 the 
land sales had jumped to six times their former 
amount, while in 1836 the returns were only a 
trifle less than $25,000,000. 

^ . , Only a moment's consideration is 
Panic of .... 

jg-y necessary to perceive that this was 

resulting in a vicious circle. The 
large amounts the Government was receiving 
from the sale of land were in the form of bank 
paper money. These receipts were in turn 
deposited with the various banks and became 
the basis of further inflation of the currency 
and expansion of credit. This could not con- 
tinue indefinitely, and again it was the hand of 

178 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

Jackson that precipitated the crisis. At this 
time the revenues of the Government were 
greater than its needs. The tariff of 1833 was 
the result of a compromise to end the nuUifica- 
tion controversy, and it was therefore con- 
sidered inadvisable, if not a breach of faith, 
to change it. For the first and only time in 
its history there was an actual surplus in the 
Federal Treasury which corresponded pretty 
closely to the additional revenue from the in- 
creased sale of land. Something had to be done 
with it ; and as to give it to the states was be- 
lieved by some to be unconstitutional, the 
course suggested itself of making loans which 
need not be recalled. Accordingly, in 1836, it 
was agreed to distribute among the various 
states the surplus of $36,000,000 in quarterly 
installments, beginning in January, 1837. Un- 
fortunately at this very time Jackson seemed 
suddenly to realize the unsound condition of 
the land speculation and ordered that all pay- 
ments for land should be made in specie. Just 
when the banks were being called upon to meet 
the Government distribution of the surplus 
and were accordingly under the necessity of 
calling in their loans, not only were the specu- 
lators forced to meet their obligations, but any 
additional purchases of land had to be in specie 
of which there was a marked shortage. The 
bubble was pricked, the boom collapsed, and 

179 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the panic of 1837 was on. The Government 
made three of the quarterly payments to the 
states and then stopped, for it, too, was prac- 
tically bankrupt. 

The crisis of 1837 was severe, and as we look 
back upon it now its effects were startling. A 
reform of banking methods was a perfectly 
Tiatural result, and it was the indirect conse- 
quences that were so striking. Believing in the 
greatness of their country's future, as well as 
caught in the mania of speculation, Americans 
had carried public improvements beyond the 
safety point. There was no justification, except 
that of enthusiasm, for the extent to which they 
were proposed. Capital in the United States 
was either insufficient or unwilling to finance 
the projects, and foreign capital had been in- 
duced to come in. To accomplish this the 
states stood back of the various enterprises. 
Sometimes the state itself undertook them, 
sometimes it guaranteed the stock, and some- 
times it only subscribed as an indication of good 
faith. In going into the work of public improve- 
ments the states were discounting the future, 
borrowing largely and in some cases relying 
on their expectations of Federal Government 
support. From almost nothing state debts in- 
creased to over $200,000,000, and an equal 
amount was obtained from foreign investors. 
Then came the crash. Several of the states 

180 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

defaulted in payment of the interest and some 
actually repudiated the principal of their debts. 
It is no wonder that foreign critics were severe, 
that Sydney Smith should have written his 
pamphlet, Letters on American Debts, and that 
Charles Dickens, in Martin Chuzzlewit and 
American Notes, should have been so caustic 
in his comments on the American people. 

These, however, were merely incidents of a 
financial crisis. What was of greater impor- 
tance was the effect upon the Americans and 
the form their reaction took. They were inher- 
ently honest, and they were stung to the quick 
by the taunts that were cast at them. So sensi- 
tive were they, that a petition found its way 
into the halls of Congress that the debt of 
Mississippi, the first defaulting state, should 
be assumed by the Federal Government, and 
that Mississippi should then be ignominiously 
expelled from the Union. More practical, but 
perhaps no less radical, action was taken by 
most of the states themselves. In the period 
immediately following the crisis, provisions 
were inserted in various constitutions forbid- 
ding states to engage in the work of public 
improvements, or limiting the amount to which 
they might invest. Just at the moment when 
the state was in process of controlling, and in 
many cases of becoming the owner of public 
utilities, it was prevented from so doing. Pri- 

i8i 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

vate corporations had to step in and carry on 
the work. 

Of almost equal importance was the effect 
upon the public land policy. The gradual 
shifting from the earlier emphasis upon revenue 
to an appreciation of the greater importance 
of encouraging settlement was hastened, until 
it might be said that the transformation was 
complete. It was as if the people asked them- 
selves, "When the greatest profits ever known 
from the sale of land have proved to be worse 
than useless and have actually brought disas- 
ter to the country, why attempt to get any 
revenue from the land? Why not encourage 
settlement which would be for the benefit of 
the United States as a whole?" There is no 
doubt that from this time encouragement of 
settlement was the one great object of the 
Federal land policy. A significant manifesta- 
tion of this is to be found in the fact that be- 
tween 1840 and i860 the Government disposed 
of some 270,000,000 acres, of which less than 
70,000,000 were sold, the rest being given away. 

Harriet Martineau was traveling in the 
United States when the craze for speculation 
was at its height, and in her Society in America 
she wrote : — 

The possession of land is the aim of all actions, 
generally speaking, and the cure for all social evils, 
among men in the United States. If a man is dis- 

182 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

appointed in politics or love, he goes and buys land. 
If he disgraces himself, he betakes himself to a lot 
in the west. If the demand for any article of manu- 
facture slackens, the operatives drop into the un- 
settled lands. If a citizen's neighbours rise above 
him in the towns, he betakes himself where he can 
be monarch of all he surveys. An artisan works, 
that he may die on land of his own. He is frugal, 
that he may enable his son to be a landowner. 
Farmers' daughters go into factories that they may 
clear ofT the mortgage from their fathers' farms; 
that they may be independent landowners again. 

An interesting illustration of the change in 
public opinion is to be found in the matter of 
settling upon unsurveyed land. From the very 
outset the policy of the Government had been 
to insist upon survey of the land before sale or 
settlement would be permitted. Act after act 
was passed forbidding settlement upon unsur- 
veyed tracts. The eagerness of the pioneers, 
however, was too much for them; men disre- 
garded the law and took up lands in advance 
of the formal opening. Each time that a new 
act was passed, the Government allowed such 
"squatters" to hold the land upon payment of 
the regular price, but strictly forbade, under 
threat of severe penalties, similar action in the 
future. Such legislation could hardly be ex- 
pected to be successful as a deterrent; the 
pioneers persisted and gradually forced their 
point of view upon the Nation at large. In 
response to this, Congress shifted its position 

183 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

and from time to time in the period under 
consideration passed general preemption acts, 
practically offering a premium to the men who 
settled on the wild lands, and the Preemption 
Act was made permanent in 1841. What had 
been a crime, or at least a misdemeanor, had 
grown to be a virtue. < < 

In a way very similar to this the Government 
gradually changed its point of view on the sub- 
ject of " internal improvements," or the build- 
ing of improved communications at national 
expense. It will be remembered that when the 
Old National Road and the Erie Canal w^ere 
built it was not considered within the province 
of the Federal Government to assist directly. 
But these highways proved too serviceable, 
especially in a new country, and the argument 
was promptly advanced that, if the Govern- 
ment did aid such undertakings, compensation 
would be had in the increased value of the 
public lands. And so when the rage for canal 
building swept the country after the successful 
completion of the Erie Canal, the pressure from 
the people, especially in the Northwest, was 
too strong. First the right of way through the 
public domain was given, with permission to 
use freely of materials for construction. Then, 
in the presidency of John Quincy Adams, who 
took a more liberal view of governmental pow- 
ers, alternate sections of land on both sides of 

184 



THE JACKSON IAN ERA 

the right of way were given to the state to aid 
in the construction. Once adopted this method 
became the regular practice, first for canals 
and then for railroads, the principal change 
being that the amounts tended steadily to in- 
crease until the climax was reached in the 
granting of ten square miles on either side of 
the right of way, or twenty square miles for 
every mile of road that was built. 

"Develop the country!" was the popular 
cry, and the uses to which the public domain 
was put met with hearty approval, that is, from 
Americans. Unprejudiced foreign observers 
saw serious evils in the American land policy. 
For example, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the 
British authority of the period on colonization, 
pointed out the "evils of dispersion," arising 
from the scattering of population, declaring, 
** In the history of the world there is no example 
of a society at once dispersed and highly civi- 
lized." 

It was Wakefield, also, who called attention 
to another consequence of the American policy. 
In 1836 a committee of the House of Commons 
was considering the subject of land in the 
British colonies and Wakefield was summoned 
as an expert. In answer to a question as to 
whether he considered the price of land in 
America sufficiently high, the witness made this 
startling assertion : — 

185 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

I think decidedly not. . . . The value, to sell at 
market, of the slaves in the United States of Amer- 
ica exceeds 120,000,000 pounds sterling. ... It ap- 
pears to me that if the price of land in the United 
States were high enough to provide for the combina- 
tion of free labour, that is, high enough to compel 
every poor free man to labour during a certain term 
for wages, the slave population of the United States, 
instead of being worth 120,000,000 pounds to sell in 
the market, would become valueless. . . . My own 
opinion is . . . that the United States possess the 
means of abolishing slavery without injury to any 
one; and that those means reside in the price of 
waste land.^ 

. Such a striking bit of testimony 
labor reveals, as nothing else can, the sig- 

nificance of the fact, so wisely in- 
sisted upon by the late Professor Callender, 
that the real labor problem in the United States 
before the Civil War was — How to get labor. 
In the South it was solved by a compulsory 
system; in the North by establishing better 
laboring conditions than probably existed any- 
where else at that time. In the latter section 
industrial changes were taking place so great 
as to amount almost to a revolution. But it 
was not merely "the domestication of the fac- 
tory system " in the United States, with its 
great accompanying increase of so-called * ' la- 
boring-men" ; there were other forces also tend- 

' This interesting and important item was brought to the 
attention of the author by Professor Payson J. Treat, of the 
Leland Stanford Junior University. 

186 



THE JACKSONIAN ERA 

ing to bring working-men everywhere to a con- 
sciousness of their common interests. Unions 
of separate trades were formed upon the basis 
of a class interest common to them all. 

This was practically contemporaneous with 
the extension of manhood suffrage, and the 
demands of enfranchised labor are significant. 
With some of these we have become per- 
fectly familiar, but others need to be recorded, 
for without them a correct understanding of 
the development of the United States is im- 
possible, and this is especially the case with 
the central feature of their programme. At a 
meeting in Philadelphia, in 1839, of delegates 
from twelve trade organizations their creed 
was frankly put: "What argument can be ad- 
duced why a more equal distribution of wealth 
should not be made?" Their answer to that 
question lies at the foundation of American life: 

We speak of a democratic republican education, 
which regards all the children as equals, ... to fit 
them as members of society and component parts of 
a free government; so when they shall arrive at 
maturity, and are thrown upon the world and their 
own resources, they may start equal in the race 
for the accumulation of wealth, or in pursuit of the 
honors of the government. This is the leveling sys- 
tem we desire — the only equal distribution of 
wealth we ask. 

Other forces were working in the same direc- 
tion. Men who wanted to go into public life 

187 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

were so completely dependent upon popular 
support that of necessity they did everything 
in their power to advance the cause of general 
education, so that the people might understand 
the appeals which were addressed to them. The 
most ardent advocates for the spread of educa- 
tion came from New England, and the religious 
motive for the support of common schools had 
largely disappeared. It has been well said that 
the industrial revolution which was taking 
place, together with the spread of democracy, 
caused a displacement of the political and social 
centers of gravity. It seems as if the former 
ruling class, finding their occupation gone, had 
sought some other outlet for their energies and 
had turned to philanthropy and reform. * 

An era of prosperity is usually 
Intellec- accompanied or followed by an 
ening intellectual awakening as well as 

by philanthropic and humanitarian 
reforms. It is impossible to assign any exact 
dates for such a development, which is seldom 
instantaneous, yet it seems as if the Jacksonian 
era displayed greater activity in this direction 
than almost any other period. That a national 
spirit had been developing in literature was 
shown in the writings which were appearing 
in periodicals immediately after the War of 
1812. The writers were apparently trying 
themselves out, and in the period under con- 

188 



THE JACKSON IAN ERA 

sideratlon a whole series of authors distin- 
guished in American literature may be named: 
Bryant, Cooper, Emerson, Hav/thorne, Poe, 
Whittier, Longfellow, Bancroft, and Holmes. 
Significant writings in the legal field were 
evidenced by Kent, Story, and Whiting; and 
in the economic world by Lieber and Carey. 
The first edition of the Encycloposdia Americana 
was published in 1829, and in these years 
Audubon and Asa Gray were making their 
contributions to natural science. In 1838 
James Smithson endowed the Smithsonian 
Institution. 

Ref rm ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ distinctly an era of 
reform. The General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church, in 1837-38, declared 
that "amusements and all parties the object 
of which is simply pleasure ought to be aban- 
doned." This doubtless indicated concern over 
the spread of pleasure-seeking, but if this was 
to be restricted some outlet for the abounding 
energy of these people had to be found. Notice- 
able in this period, then, were the great mis- 
sionary societies, home and foreign, and all 
sorts of religious organizations. Combe, in 
1839, commented upon the charitable activities 
of the Americans and upon the large financial 
contributions that they made to these causes. 
He was describing the annual meetings of the 
benevolent and religious societies which were 

189 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

taking place in New York in the spring of that 
year, and after a brief account of the Ameri- 
can Anti-Slavery Society, the American Tract 
Society, and the American Bible Society, he 
went on : — 

The names of some of the other societies of which 
meetings are announced for this week, are the New 
York Marine Bible Society; the New York Female 
Moral Reform Society; the American Seamen's 
Friend Society; the New York and American Sun- 
day School Union ; the Foreign Evangelical Associ- 
ation; American Tract Society; American Moral 
Reform Society; New York City Temperance 
Society; American Board of Foreign Missions; 
New York Academy of Sacred Music. 

There were various associations for prison 
reform and for more humane treatment of 
criminals. So much was done in the United 
States in the improvement of penitentiaries 
that the House of Commons, in 1834, ordered 
a report upon these institutions to be printed 
and distributed. A temperance wave swept 
over the Nation, leaving in its wake organized 
societies with over a million members. All 
sorts of communistic schemes were tried, so 
that one writer has made out a list of fifty- 
seven attempts to form "associations" be- 
tween 1826 and 1846. There w^ere organiza- 
tions favoring the adoption of woman suffrage, 
for the suppression of lotteries, and for stop- 
ping the carrying of mail on the Sabbath. And 

190 



THE JACKSON I AN ERA 

one of the many reforms was for the abolition 
of slavery. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

J. S. Bassett has written the best Life of Andrew Jackson 
(191 1), although James Parton's Life (1866) still remains 
authoritative because of its documentary material. The best 
short history of the Jacksonian era is that of William Mac- 
Donald, Jacksonian Democracy (1906). W. E. Dodd, Expan- 
sion and Conflict (1915), is the latest good interpretation of 
the period from Jackson through the Civil War, although 
Woodrow Wilson's Division and Reunion (1909), referred to in 
the text, cannot be neglected. 

In addition to the volumes of the American Statesmen series, 
previously referred to, attention might be drawn to Gaillard 
Hunt, Life of Calhoun (1908), and to J. B. McMaster, Daniel 
Webster (1902). 

Important for their particular subjects are D. F. Houston, 
A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina (1902); 
R. G. Wellington, The Political and Sectional Influence of the 
Public Lands, 1828-1842 (1914); R. C. H. Catterall, The 
Second Bank of the United States (1903); Lois K. Mathews, 
Expansion of New England {igooi); William Garrott Brown, 
The Lower South in American History (1902); E. G. Bourne, 
History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837 (1885); W. A. Scott, 
Repudiation of State Debts (1893), and John R. Commons 
et al.. History of Labour in the United States (1918). 

The Railroad forms a subject by itself, and the books upon 
it are frequently gathered in special libraries. For the general 
reader there is nothing better than F. A. Cleveland and F. W. 
Powell, Railroad Promotion and Capitalization in the United 
States (1909), while for the student E. R. Johnson and T. W. 
Van Metre, Principles of Railroad Transportation (19 16), and 
B. H. Meyer (Editor), History of Transportation in the United 
States before i860 (Carnegie Institution, 1917), are most useful. 



CHAPTER IX 

MANIFEST DESTINY 

"Develop the country!" had been the cry of 
the previous era, and to a large extent the en- 
ergies of the people had been turned in that 
direction. Now, as a result of forces long at 
work the slogan became "Manifest destiny!" 
— which was understood to mean the occupa- 
tion of the whole central portion of the North 
American continent and perhaps an even larger 
area. 

», With the expansion of cotton-plant- 

ing and the consequent desire for 
new land, the Southerners were looking with 
longing eyes toward Texas. As early as 1817, 
Peck's Emigrant's Guide had advised new- 
comers that there were wonderful opportunities 
in Texas for the growing of cotton, if permis- 
sion to settle there could be obtained. For 
three centuries Spain had held that region, but 
without any particular interest in it. Missions 
were established, forts were built, and settle- 
ments were made; but only to guard against 
the aggressions of the French and later against 
the Americans. At the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century the estimates indicate a white 
population in Texas of only one or two thou- 

192 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

sand. When Mexico revolted, along with other 
Spanish-American colonies, she was primarily 
concerned with maintaining her independence. 
Not being particularly interested in Texas, 
Mexico welcomed the opportunity to obtain 
the favor and support of Americans by opening 
that province to them. The Americans at once 
took advantage of what the Spanish and Mexi- 
cans had failed to appreciate for three hundred 
years. There may have been thirty-five hun- 
dred white people in Texas in 1821 ; within ten 
years they had increased to twenty thousand; 
while in five years more even those numbers 
had doubled, and practically all of the new- 
comers were Americans. They came mainly 
from the Southwest, they appreciated the 
advantages of the climate and soil offered by 
Texas, and there is no doubt that what they 
wanted was land where they could continue 
the pursuits in which they had been previously 
engaged, which was, to a large extent, the 
growing of cotton. There could be but one 
outcome of such a condition, the establish- 
ment of the independence of Texas, which 
took place in 1836, and then annexation to the 
United States. 

^ Two streams of migration had come 

Oregon . , ,x. . . . ^r „ , 

into the Mississippi Valley and two 

streams of migration flowed out farther into the 

West: the one into Texas as just noticed, and 

193 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the other in the North to the Pacific Coast. 
It was not the later far-famed California that 
drew men to the coast, but Oregon. Trappers 
and fur-traders had visited the Far West and 
established their posts at various points, but 
the real movement for the occupation of the 
country came as the result of missionary enter- 
prise. Neither Great Britain nor the United 
States had a superior claim to this north- 
western region, and after the War of 1812, 
when many other matters were amicably ar- 
ranged, the boundary line between Canada 
and the United States was continued as far as 
the Rocky Mountains and it was agreed that 
the country west of that should be open to 
joint occupation. The Northwest Company, 
and later the Hudson's Bay Company, was 
actually in control. 

In the early thirties an appeal was made by 
the Flathead Indians for missionaries to be 
sent among them, which was taken up in 
Protestant pulpits, and coming as it did w^hen 
the wave of philanthropy and reform was 
sweeping over the United States, the response 
was enthusiastic. The Methodists were first 
in the field, in 1834, and were promptly fol- 
lowed by Congregationalists and Presbyterians. 
As missionary ventures these efforts did not 
prove any too successful, but they succeeded in 
attracting attention to the Oregon country, 

194 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

and started a small colonization movement 
in that direction. 

The Panic of 1837 had been followed by years 
of hard times on the frontier. The impulse of 
the frontiersman under such conditions was 
to move on, and it required only some added 
inducement to rouse him to action. In 1840 
a bill was introduced in Congress which disre- 
garded the agreement for joint occupation, and 
assuming the right of the United States to the 
Oregon country, recommended the building of 
aline of forts from the Missouri to the Colum- 
bia, and then proposed to offer 640 acres of 
land to every one who would go out and set- 
tle in the Columbia River Valley. Negotiations 
being under way for the settlement of the north- 
eastern boundary between the United States 
and Canada, the Administration was afraid 
that this bill would be embarrassing. It was 
accordingly withdrawn, but when the Webster- 
Ashburton Treaty had been successfully con- 
cluded, in 1842, the bill was again introduced 
and was passed by the upper house. Early in 
1843 Lord Palmerston declared in the House 
of Commons: "It is possible that the bill may 
not pass, but if it did pass, and become a law, 
and was acted on, it would be a declaration of 
war." The bill failed to pass the lower house, 
but the terms of the bill were known and 
widely published. The occupation of Oregon 

195 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

thereupon became a patriotic movement in 
which those who were animated by a spirit of 
adventure could engage, with the possibiUty of 
rendering a service to their country and at the 
same time benefiting themselves. Their patri- 
otism was further stimulated by the desire to 
get ahead of the British. In consequence of 
this, in 1843, nearly a thousand people emi- 
grated from the United States to Oregon; 
followed the next year by fourteen hundred 
more; and in 1845 there were some three 
thousand. 

There was no use of Canadians or British 
trying to compete with such a showing, and a 
military commission sent out from London in 
1845 advised their Government of that fact. 
The story is still current in Canada that the 
commission was made up of English country 
gentlemen who were fond of sport; reaching 
the Oregon country when the salmon were 
running in the Columbia River, they found 
to their disgust that the fish would not rise to 
a fly, and they accordingly reported that the 
country was not worth keeping. It is natural 
that the Canadians, as every other people in a 
similar position, should have felt from time to 
time that their local interests were sacrificed 
for what the British Government might con- 
sider the greater needs of the Empire. But 
with such a feeling existing it is easy to see how 

196 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

this particular story arose out of the simple 
fact that Lieutenants Warre and Vavasour, 
in order to keep their real mission a secret, 
outfitted in Montreal as sportsmen. 

-. ,.^ The Oregon question, and Texas as 

Politics „ , . A • 1- 

well, now passed mto American poli- 
tics, where it was possible to make a party is- 
sue, as the various elements in opposition to 
"King Andrew" had united under the name of 
Whigs. Just as soon as the improved means 
of communication and transportation made 
such a method feasible, the party convention 
had been adopted as a regular piece of political 
machinery, offering a way of selecting nomi- 
nees that insured a more general acquiescence 
in the choice. The financial disaster of Van 
Buren's administration contributed materially 
to the result, but whatever the causes, in the 
"log cabin and hard cider campaign" of 1840 
— probably the most picturesque in Ameri- 
can political history, a campaign of enthusiasm, 
"of monster meetings, carnival pomp, and 
doggerel verse" — the Whigs were successful 
in electing to the presidency General William 
Henry Harrison, a popular military hero of the 
West. Unfortunately, in an attempt to win 
Southern votes the Whigs had named as Vice- 
President, John Tyler, a Virginian aristocrat 
and state-rights Democrat who had split with 
Jackson. The choice proved to be disastrous, 

197 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

for Harrison died after being in office only a 
month, and Tyler, as his successor, could not 
work with the Whig leaders, so that the party 
lost strength. Just before the next presidential 
campaign of 1844, in an effort to regain favor, 
Tyler announced the conclusion of a treaty of 
annexation with Texas, which the Whig Senate 
promptly rejected, and for which even the House 
of Representatives showed its disapproval. 

Henry Clay came out against the annexation 
of Texas and received the Whig nomination, 
while the Democrats for the first time made a 
"dark horse" their candidate, naming James 
K. Polk, a former congressman from Tennessee. 
It was a clever move on the part of the latter 
to choose catching phrases as party cries: "The 
Re-occupation of Oregon and the Re-annexa- 
tion of Texas!" "The whole of Oregon or 
none!" "Fifty- four forty or fight!" Fearing 
that popular sentiment was against him. Clay 
tried to hedge on the Texas question, but he 
only lost votes thereby and Polk was elected. 
Thereupon the stipulated twelve months* no- 
tice was given to Great Britain, that the joint 
occupation of Oregon must terminate, and 
soon afterward in 1846, the question was ami- 
cably settled by treaty, the Canadian- American 
boundary line on the forty-ninth parallel being 
continued west of the Rocky Mountains to the 
Pacific. 

198 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

. While this was going on, namely in 
can War ^^45' Texas also had been annexed. 
Although it was impossible to get a 
treaty to that effect approved by the necessary 
two-thirds vote in the Senate, the same result 
was accomplished through the adoption by Con- 
gress of a joint resolution providing for annex- 
ation, as this required only a majority vote of 
both houses. It was understood that this action, 
embodying as it did the acceptance of Texas 
claims with regard to boundaries, would re- 
sult in war with Mexico. The President was 
an expansionist; he was determined to obtain 
California as well as these other additions, and 
he was therefore ready to go to war with 
Mexico and only wanted to justify the act. 
The reasons he gave in his war message to Con- 
gress of May II, 1846, were that "war exists, 
and notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, 
exists by the act of Mexico itself," and that 
this was because " now, after reiterated men- 
aces, Mexico has passed the boundary of the 
United States, has invaded our territory, and 
shed American blood upon the American soil." 
Abraham Lincoln was elected to the next 
Congress. He was a Whig and therefore in 
opposition to the Administration, but he was 
also displaying that characteristic quality of 
his, which Kipling so aptly describes as the 
American ability to turn " Home, to the instant 

199 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

need of things," when he introduced into the 
House of Representatives a series of resolutions 
known as Lincoln's "Spot Resolutions." The 
substance of them was: "That the President 
of the United States be respectfully requested 
to inform this House . . . whether the spot on 
which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in 
his messages declared, was not within the 
territory of Spain," and later within the ter- 
ritory of Mexico; and finally, "Whether our 
citizens whose blood was shed, as in his mes- 
sages declared, were or were not at that time 
armed officers and soldiers, sent into that settle- 
ment by the military order of the President, 
through the Secretary of War." These resolu- 
tions were never acted upon, serving merely as 
an introduction to a speech, but their import 
is unmistakable. 

Early American interest in California had 
been largely a matter of obtaining furs and of 
trading on the coast. Only a few people from 
the United States had settled there, although 
some had gone from Oregon, and others who 
had started for the latter place had been de- 
flected from their purpose by the superior 
attractions reported of California. But as the 
United States expanded, in its commerce as 
well as in settlement, a port upon the Pacific 
Coast became more and more desirable, and 
the interest of the Federal Government seems 

200 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

to have been primarily on that account. There 
are indications years before of an intention on 
the part of the United States to obtain Cali- 
fornia. It was hoped to acquire the province 
peaceably ; but evidently instructions were given 
to the proper parties to take possession when- 
ever the opportunity offered, and so as one of 
the campaigns of the Mexican War an expedi- 
tion was sent to California, and the country 
fell easily into American hands. 

After all, taking the various circumstances 
into account, it is not surprising that the United 
States went to war with Mexico. The astonish- 
ing thing is that once engaged in the war the 
Americans were content with so little. The 
result was a foregone conclusion, but with the 
unexpected success of the invading expeditions 
into Mexico, until even the impregnable Mexico 
City was in American hands, it is remarkable 
that the victors did not take all of Mexico. 
The sentiment in favor of it was stronger than 
might have been expected, and several of the 
Cabinet supported such a policy. However, 
the war had not been undertaken for this pur- 
pose; nor had there been time for the brilliant 
military victories to produce their full effects; 
and there was a growing feeling that this ex- 
pansion would mean the extension of slavery. 
There is good history as well as good literature 
in James Russell Lowell's Biglow Papers: — 

201 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

"Ez fer war, I call it murder, — 

There you hev it plain an' flat; 
I don't want to go no furder 

Than my Testyment fer that; 
God hez sed so plump an' fairly, 

It's ez long ez it is broad, 
An' you've gut to git up airly 

Ef you want to take in God. 

"They may talk o' Freedom's airy 

Tell they're pupple in the face, — 
It 's a grand gret cemetary 

Fer the barthrights of our race; 
They jest want this Californy 

So 's to lug new slave-states in 
To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, 

An' to plunder ye like sin." 

And again, — 

"Parson Wilbur he calls all these argimunts lies; 

Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, faw, fum, 
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies 

Is half on it ignorance, an' t' other half rum." 

Peace was made with Mexico in 1848, and 
the United States not only assumed certain 
claims of its own citizens, but also gave to its 
defeated enemy $15,000,000 for the territories 
acquired. It is natural to regard such payment 
as a sop to uneasy consciences, and that may 
well have been one of the unconf essed motives ; 
but it is rather characteristic of American 
generosity and fair play. Those, however, are 
matters of personal interpretation, and the 
facts are that by the terms of the treaty the 
title to Texas was placed beyond question and 
California was definitely ceded, together with 

202 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

the country lying between California and 
Texas; not that the Americans took any inter- 
est in the last region except that it rounded 
out their boundaries and protected their lines 
of communication. In less than four years the 
United States had increased its area by 390,000 
square miles in Texas, 285,000 in Oregon, and 
530,000 in the Mexican Cession, a total that 
was one third larger than the original area 
of the United States, and nearly double its 
area in 1840. 

— , ., Acquiring of vast territories was 
The Mid- ^, ^ **. u *. *. ^u 1 

die West *"^ conspicuous, but not the only 

phase of American expansion at 
this period. An increase of population from 
17,000,000 in 1840 to 31,000,000 in i860 (of 
which over 4,000,000 came through immigra- 
tion), and the building of 27,000 miles of rail- 
road, would necessitate a spread of population 
within the former boundaries. While the dis- 
covery of gold in California in 1848 caused a 
picturesque rush of adventurers and settlers to 
that region, an increase of a hundred thousand 
is almost nothing in comparison with a larger 
growth elsewhere. The less spectacular feature 
of American expansion, but the one of most 
importance, was the increase of settlement in 
the Mississippi Valley. Fostered by the lib- 
eral, or extravagant, policy which sold land 
cheaply to any one and gave it freely to assist 

203 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

in the building of roads and canals, the Western 
population increased so rapidly that by i860 
many more than half of all the people in the 
United States were living beyond the Alle- 
ghenies. The center of wool-growing and the 
center of milling, as well as that of grain- 
growing, had also passed west of the mountains. 

These were stirring years, when 
Industnal expansion to the Pacific appealed 
ment *^ ^^^ imagination of Americans, 

when the Mexican War aroused 
them (some, it is true, in opposition), and 
when the discovery of gold in California caused 
great excitement. Yet the mass of the people 
in the United States went about their ordinary 
occupations. It was unromantic, but from one 
point of view the most important aspect of the 
period was industrial, especially as many of the 
characteristic features of American industry 
seem to have become prominent at that time. 
The great increase in railroad mileage al- 
ready referred to was merely an indication of 
the extent to which improved transportation 
was being carried. So far as industrial devel- 
opment was concerned, a fundamental point 
was, of course, that steam transportation by 
land and by water permitted specialization 
to a much greater degree. It carried manu- 
factured products to wider markets and it 
brought the necessary food and materials to the 

204 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

factory towns. By way of illustration, the use 
of coal instead of charcoal for smelting greatly 
increased iron production. By the new means 
of transportation coal might be carried to any 
point. But it was of greater economic impor- 
tance that, when coal-fields and ore-beds were 
found together, the iron industry could con- 
centrate there, relying upon the railroad to dis- 
tribute its products and supply its needs. 

Given these fundamental conditions, forces 
peculiarly American came into play, and the 
first of these was inventiveness. For some time 
after the cotton gin there seems to have been 
no great American invention, and then almost 
suddenly and in a comparatively short space 
there were invented or developed to the stage 
of utility the sewing machine, the McCormick 
reaper, the Goodyear process of hardening rub- 
ber, and the magnetic telegraph. And these 
were only a few of many, for the significant 
aspect of this American trait is that the 
United States developed a "democracy of small 
inventors." Until after the War of 1812 there 
were not one hundred patents a year taken out ; 
in the period we are considering they increased 
to thousands. Local conditions were primarily 
responsible, but the ease of obtaining patents 
was a great encouragement, and as soon as the 
time was ripe development was rapid. 
Automatic machinery was rapidly extended 

205 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

through this inventive genius, because of the 
scarcity and high price of labor, but also be- 
cause of the American's impatience with the 
mechanical repetition of a series of simple move- 
ments. Any device for the saving of time and 
labor received a cordial welcome. The inventor 
of the cotton gin, Eli Whitney, is credited with 
originating the system of interchangeable parts 
in the manufacture of firearms in New Haven, 
Connecticut, as early as 1800, It received an 
extraordinary impetus from its usefulness in 
machines for shoemaking and ready-made 
clothing. The sewing machine is an excellent 
example, and the use of such machines and of 
iron stoves seems to have led to the demand for 
interchangeable cast parts, until the combina- 
tion of automatic machinery and interchange- 
able parts resulted in what was practically a 
new system of manufacturing, of which Ameri- 
can firearms, clocks, and watches are typical. 
Even this does not tell the whole story, for 
a series of obstacles was encountered in financ- 
ing the undertakings on the scale required. 
There was not a sufficient accumulation of 
capital in the United States to make it easy 
to obtain the necessary funds for what were 
essentially speculative enterprises in trying 
out new inventions. The difficulty was met 
by the use of joint-stock companies, where the 
principle of limited liability permitted small 

206 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

investments by a large number of persons. 
Some were slow to accept the idea; for exam- 
ple, an act of the South Carolina Legislature 
on this subject was hailed by the Greenville 
Mountaineer as an act which should be entitled 
"An Act for legalizing fraud." ^ But states 
which refused to adopt the general principle, 
or which followed the British practice of requir- 
ing a special act and only after investigation had 
been made, found themselves so handicapped 
that the ultimate result was the passage of 
general incorporation laws. A British com- 
mission to the United States officially reported 
to their Government, in 1854, that "The Law 
of Limited Liability ... is an important source 
of the prosperity which attends the industry of 
the United States." 

In other countries developments such as 
have been described were slower in taking place 
and time was given for the necessary adjust- 
ment. In the United States everything hap- 
pened at once; "All economic functions, bank- 
ing, exchange, transportation, commerce, agri- 
culture, manufactures, simultaneously adopted 
new machines and methods." America was still 
an agricultural commonwealth, but it was 
changing into an industrial state and the proc- 
ess was going on rapidly. In 1850 for the first 

1 Cited by C. S. Boucher, "Ante-Bellum Attitude of South 
Carolina," in Washington University Studies, iii (1916), p. 252. 

207 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

time the annual value of manufactures was 
recorded as surpassing that of agriculture, but 
by i860 the priority of agriculture was reestab- 
lished, the somewhat abnormal conditions hav- 
ing culminated in the financial panic of 1857. 
It is little wonder that there should have been 
some confusion, some irregularity, and some 
uncertainty, but the growth was vigorous, the 
country supported it, and came out of it crude 
and rough, but a country of great strength. 

Tv_ .x_ As long as the United States could 
Prospenty , ** , . r 1 • 

endure the stram of this great 

change and sudden development, prosperity 
was sure to result, and prosperity came. Some 
observers were impressed by "the absence of 
pauperism. Nothing is more striking than the 
universal appearance of respectability of all 
classes in America." Others were affected by 
the lavish use of the newly acquired wealth; 
the period has even been referred to as the 
"Golden Age." The high cost of living was 
charged up to the unnecessary sending parcels 
home by shop-keepers instead of the purchasers 
themselves carrying them as they used to do, 
and to the expense of decorations at entertain- 
ments. Such things are, after all, relative, and 
those who have lived long enough to experience 
an era of prosperity would recognize the follow- 
ing comments as characteristic, although these 
were made in 1857: — 

208 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

From being once a domestic, quiet people, con- 
tent to rest in their fireside comforts, and indoor 
society, — they are being all drawn abroad to seek 
for spectacles and public wonders ! Now there are 
puffing advertisements to draw them abroad every 
night and day in the week — and this is not all — 
the whole must be indulged at so much expense! 
— One sees that it is working a serious evil ; — 
but who knows how to stay it! To all this, add 
the rivalship of grandeur in houses — expensive 
furniture — immense and luxurious hotels — ele- 
gance and costs of Passenger vessels — and Pas- 
senger Cars — costly carriages — costly dresses for 
ladies and jewelry, — Pride and not comfort give 
favour to immense hotels, as some think. ^ 

The same author quotes an interesting state- 
ment, presumably written about 1842, that 
is also thoroughly in keeping, regarding what 
is termed the "encroachments upon female 
modesty": — 

Such came lately in the form of opera dancing, 
waltzing, and circus riding, wherein performers, 
in the display of limbs and individual symmetry, 
had the countenance of society. 

„ r For the first time in contemporary 

accounts much was made of "the 
vile corruption of politics," the charge being, 
with the growth of a class of professional poli- 
ticians and the great increase of wealth, that 
money was used improperly, both for bribing 
of voters and for accomplishing the miscarriage 

^ John F. Watson, Annals oj Philadelphia and Pennsylvania 
(1857). 

209 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of justice. In such an atmosphere it seems as 
if the altruism of Americans must have been 
lost, and yet it manifested itself in various 
ways. There were many associations for the 
solution of social problems, while reform move- 
ments were even more extensive than those of 
the preceding decade, and it was to the peo- 
ple of that time that Emerson, the greatest of 
American idealists, made his successful appeal. 
Abolition was one of the isms being agitated, 
and though it was taboo in good society for 
many years, it eventually succeeded and 
thereby became one of the great reforms of the 
time. 

Because it is so apposite as well as readable, 
it is ventured to use, even at the risk of too 
much quotation, an extract from the introduc- 
tion to one of the volumes of the Documen- 
tary History of American Industrial Society, by 
Professor John R. Commons : — 

The forties far outran the other periods in its 
unbounded loquacity. The columns of advertise- 
ments in a newspaper might announce for Monday 
night a meeting of the antislavery society ; Tuesday 
night, the temperance society; Wednesday night, 
the graham bread society; Thursday night, a 
phrenological lecture; Friday night, an address 
against capital punishment; Saturday night, the 
"Association for Universal Reform." Then there 
were all the missionary societies, the woman's rights 
societies, the society for the diffusion of bloomers, 
the seances of the spiritualists, the " association- 

2IO 



MANIFEST DESTINY 

ists," the land reformers — a medley of movements 
that found the week too short, A dozen colonies 
of idealists, like the Brook Farm philosophers, went 
off by themselves to solve the problem of social 
existence in a big family called a phalanx. The 
Mormons gathered themselves together to recon- 
stitute the ten lost tribes. Robert Owen called 
a "world's convention" on short notice, where a 
dozen different "plans" of social reorganization — 
individualistic, communistic, incomprehensible — 
were submitted in all solemnity. It was the golden 
age of the talk-fest, the lyceum, and brotherhood 
of man — the " hot-air " period of American history. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Several points in this chapter were developed from E. G. 
Bourne, Essays in Historical Criticism. G. P. Garrison, West- 
ward Extension (1906), is the best single volume upon the ex- 
pansion of this period, but gives proportionately too much space 
to Texas and the Mexican War in comparison with the acquisi- 
tion of Oregon and California. There is no good history of the 
Pacific Coast, although H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific 
States (34 vols., 1882-1890), is the most voluminous and is use- 
ful and valuable for reference. T. H. Hittell, History of Cali- 
fornia (4 vols., 1886-1897), is much more useful for the average 
reader. Joseph Schafer, History ^ of the Pacific Northwest (1905), 
is the best for that section. Josiah Royce, California {American 
Commonwealths series, 1886), is excellent, but only carries the 
history to 1856; and Stewart Edward White, The Forty-Niners 
(1918), is fascinating in its interest. George L. Rives, United 
States and Mexico, 1821-1848 (2 vols., 1913), is the latest and 
best history of its subject. Upon the industrial development 
reference should be made again to V. S. Clark, History of Manu- 
factures in the United States, 1607-1860 (Carnegie Institution, 
1916). 



CHAPTER X 

SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

Through the persecution of the abolitionists, 
as well as from the continued agitation by 
them, slavery was gradually raised to the emi- 
nence of a moral issue, but it was not primarily 
in such light that it appeared to the people of 
the United States. To them it was almost 
entirely a matter of extending an undesirable 
institution into the newly opened territories 
in the West. It was thought that the Missouri 
Compromise, in 1820, had settled the question 
for all time, but that specifically applied to 
the " territory ceded by France to the United 
States, under the name of Louisiana." The 
recent territorial acquisitions had changed the 
situation, and it was a realization of that fact 
which had caused a large part of the opposition 
to the annexation of Texas and to the Mexican 
War. Northerners in Congress were sufficiently 
in the majority to have passed the "Wilmot 
Proviso," which would have prohibited slavery 
in territories acquired from Mexico, but owing 
apparently to a misunderstanding final action 
was not taken before Congress adjourned, and 
then it seems to have been hoped and assumed 

212 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

that the status quo in the newly acquired terri- 
tories would be maintained. 

Suddenly matters came to a crisis by the 
rush of settlers to California after the discovery 
of gold. If a territorial government had only 
been established, as was the right method of 
procedure, all might have been well. But 
Congress evaded the responsibility, largely 
because the two houses were unable to agree, 
and late in 1849 the settlers took matters into 
their own hands and set up a government for 
themselves. This was a characteristically 
American way of meeting the emergency, for 
which there were many precedents, and in this 
case the action would probably have met with 
hearty approval, if it had not been for the 
question of slavery. The gold-seekers estab- 
lished boundaries for their new state of Cali- 
fornia very much as they are at present, and 
they forbade slavery in the state thus formed. 
A glance at the map will show that a continu- 
ation of the Missouri Compromise line would 
have divided California into two parts. If it 
had been thus divided, it is altogether possible 
that the slavery question would not have been 
agitated at that time, and it furnishes an inter- 
esting speculation as to whether the Civil War 
might not have been avoided, for slavery would 
have been doomed before long through eco- 
nomic forces. The only warrant for what the 

213 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Califomians did was the failure of Congress to 
act, which explains why John C. Calhoun could 
say that it was " a piece of gross impertinence," 
and indicates that there would be serious oppo- 
sition. 

Polk had been succeeded in the 
promise presidency by General Zachary Tay- 
of 1850 lor, a military hero who was also 
a Southern Whig and a slaveholder. 
Straightforward to the point of bluntness, he 
favored the unconditional admission of Cali- 
fornia, and his assistance would probably have 
been sufficient to have carried the measure 
through Congress; but his unfortunate death 
occurred in the summer of 1850. Vice-Presi- 
dent Millard Fillmore, who thereupon became 
President, favored the compromise measures 
of Henry Clay, which were ultimately adopted. 
This "Compromise of 1850," as it was called, 
provided for the admission of California as a 
free state; for organizing the rest of the terri- 
tory acquired from Mexico without mention 
of slavery, leaving the inhabitants of each 
district to determine the question for them- 
selves when they came to form a state ; and for 
a new and more effective fugitive slave law. 

The threatened rupture between North and 
South seemed once more to have been averted, 
and when one thinks of the manufacturing 
development taking place at that time and of 

214 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

the accompanying material prosperity, it does 
not seem astonishing that the people generally 
and business men in particular should have 
objected to anything that would disturb exist- 
ing commercial relations between the sections. 
They talked and tried to convince themselves 
of the "finality of the Compromise of 1850," 
Oddly enough, at least at first thought, the 
situation seems to have strengthened political 
party organization. As slavery became more 
and more of a moral issue, men's consciences 
were growingly troubled and an excuse for inac- 
tion was welcomed. A man should stand by his 
party, and if the party determined that it 
could not take definite action on the slavery 
question, the individual was relieved and the 
responsibility placed upon the organization. 

But trouble was only temporarily 
The Kan- avoided by the Compromise of 
braskaAct ^^5^, and when it came again it 

was from an unexpected quarter. 
Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator 
from Illinois, was a great believer in extending 
railway facilities throughout the West. He was 
a supporter of the Illinois Central Railroad, and 
without even insinuating the slightest unworthy 
interest on his part, he later would have been 
termed a ** railroad senator." To advance the 
railroads farther into the West they must be 
built through the Indian country, the title to 

215 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

which had first to be extinguished and the land 
taken under Government control. This could 
be done by the creation of new territories, and 
Douglas accordingly introduced a bill for erect- 
ing the country just west of Missouri into the 
organized territories of Nebraska and Kansas. 
If there were any political motives involved, as 
commonly charged, they would seem to have 
been subordinate to the purpose of railroad 
extension. The area affected was partly within 
the boundaries of the old Louisiana Purchase, 
and partly within the territory acquired from 
Mexico. To objections from the South, Doug- 
las conceded that in place of the Missouri Com- 
promise the principles of the Compromise of 
1850 should be in force. The Southerners 
pressed the advantage thus obtained, and in 
order to save the bill from defeat Douglas was 
forced to agree to the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. It was apparently a tactical ne- 
cessity, but it proved to be a fatal blunder. At 
once the country was aroused. 

The execution of the harsh and retroactive 
provisions of the Fugitive Slave Law stirred 
up bitter feeling In the North among the better 
people, while Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
with Its overdrawn picture and exaggerated 
pathos, appealed to the masses especially when 
dramatized. It was wittily said that the Whig 
Party had expired In 1852 through an attempt 

216 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

to swallow the Fugitive Slave Act. Even with 
a Mexican War hero, General Winfield Scott, 
at the head of their ticket, the Whigs lost to the 
Democrats, who had chosen the good-natured 
and popular Franklin Pierce as their candidate. 
In that same year both Clay and Webster died, 
indicative of the fact that the old leaders were 
passing, and younger men were coming forward 
with demands for a new [party which should 
not be afraid to meet the questions of the day. 
The Kansas-Nebraska Act furnished the issue, 
which was incisively stated in the course of the 
debate in Congress. Senator Badger of North 
Carolina had asked : — 

Why, if some Southern gentleman wishes to take 
the nurse who takes charge of his little baby, or the 
old woman who nursed him in childhood, and whom 
he called "Mammy" until he returned from col- 
lege, and perhaps afterwards too, and whom he 
wishes to take with him in his old age when he is 
moving into one of these new territories for the 
betterment of the fortunes of the whole family — 
why, in the name of God, should anybody prevent 
it? 

To which Senator Wade of Ohio retorted : — 

The senator entirely mistakes our position. We 
have not the least objection, and would oppose no 
obstacle to the senator's migrating to Kansas and 
taking his old "Mammy" along with him. We 
only insist that he shall not be empowered to sell 
her after taking her there. ^ 

1 James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, i, pp. 
452, 453. 

217 



' DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Different parts of the country claim the honor 
of being the birthplace of the RepubUcan 
Party, which would be of little importance if it 
did not show how general the movement was, 
and that the new party literally sprang into 
being. There were anti- Nebraska Whigs and 
anti-Nebraska Democrats; there were Know- 
Nothings and Free-Soilers ; and even Abolition- 
ists could support a party which opposed the 
extension of slavery into the territories. 

But the issue was not merely politi- 
Kansas ^^' ^^^^^ ^^^ ^"^ actual physical 
struggle contest for the possession of Kansas, 
which was foretold by William H. 
Seward, Senator from New York, when he 
cried : — 

Come on, then, Gentlemen of the Slave States. 
Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept 
it on behalf of freedom. We will engage in compe- 
tition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give 
the victory to the side that is stronger in numbers 
as it is in the right. 

In the North societies were organized to 
encourage and assist settlers, the most famous 
of which was the New England Emigrant Aid 
Company. This was unexpected, and was re- 
garded by the South as not playing the game 
in accordance with the rules. On their part 
the Southerners were handicapped by the fact 
that their wealth was largely in land and slaves, 

218 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

but still they moved out in support of their 
cause, and we have the story of one owner 
chopping wood with his own hands for a fire 
to keep his slaves from freezing. 

There is little doubt that the settlers from 
the North were the more numerous and that 
the Southerners won the first territorial elec- 
tion only by "colonizing" voters from Mis- 
souri. Believing that the territorial legislature 
had been captured by fraud, the anti-slavery 
men, without any other authorization than the 
conviction that they were in the majority, pro- 
ceeded to set up an independent government, 
and to organize the territory as a state, which 
was of course to be a free state. Strictly and 
legally the Southerners were in the right until 
they should have been found otherwise by the 
courts. The free-state men considered them- 
selves ethically in the right and being in the 
majority insisted that they were entitled to 
control the government. Under such circum- 
stances, considering the time and place, fight- 
ing and bloodshed were inevitable. 

Kansas was but typical of the whole struggle 
between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. 
The Southerners were fighting a losing fight, 
held back by an economic system that most 
of the world had outgrown, and with a social 
life that in its finer phases had set many of the 
standards for American aristocracy, yet re- 

219 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

tained certain features that had been generally 
repudiated. Technically the Southerners were 
in the right; but potentially, because they were 
relying upon an institution that was inherently 
unfit, they w^ere in the wrong. To maintain 
their position they naturally fell back upon 
legal processes. The Missouri Compromise was 
a favorite subject of attack because the mere 
differentiation of sections was an invidious 
discrimination, and since its adoption the 
South had been falling off in comparison with 
the North. The Compromise of 1850 had 
brought in a substitute, so far as the new terri- 
tories were concerned, that was more accept- 
able to the Southerners, and also it had given 
them a fugitive slave law as stringent as they 
could wish and more severe than was wise. 
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Mis- 
souri Compromise; and finally, the Supreme 
Court, in 1857, was persuaded, in the Dred 
Scott case, to declare that the Missouri Com- 
promise had been unconstitutional and was 
therefore null and void. 

These were legal victories, but they were of 
no avail except to obscure the truth. The 
actual state of affairs was much better shown 
in a series of commercial conventions, begin- 
ning about 1845, which the Southerners called 
for the purpose of stimulating efforts to remedy 
their greatest weakness, their absolute depend- 

220 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

ence industrially upon the North. A speech 
that seems to have had a telling effect, for it 
was widely quoted and apparently repeated 
in different forms, revealed the situation : — 

From the rattle with which the nurse tickles the 
ear of the child born in the South, to the shovel that 
covers the cold form of the dead, everything comes 
to us from the North. We rise from between sheets 
made in Northern looms and pillows of Northern 
feathers; we eat from Northern plates and dishes; 
our rooms are swept with Northern brooms; our 
gardens are dug with Northern spades ; our bread 
kneaded in trays or dishes of Northern wood or 
tin ; and the very wood with which we feed our fires 
is cut with Northern axes, helved with hickory 
brought from Connecticut and New York. 

_, . For so young a party the Republi- 

Election , n ^ i. • • 

of i860 ^^^^ made an excellent snowing m 

the elections of 1856, and were able 
to secure a large number of seats in Congress ; 
but for the highest office the young and not alto- 
gether trusted John C. Fremont was unsuccess- 
ful against the veteran Democratic politician, 
James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. Under or- 
dinary conditions Buchanan would probably 
have made a satisfactory record as President, 
but he was unequal to the crisis which was aris- 
ing, and the country prepared for a change. 
In i860 the Republicans outraged the feelings 
of the better men of the East by nominating 
the uncouth Abraham Lincoln from Illinois. 
There may have been clever political manipu- 

221 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

lation in the convention, yet it was Lincoln 
who in his marvelously direct way was already 
defining the issue between the North and the 
South more sharply than ever had been done 
before, and it was to this that the people re- 
sponded in i860. The Democrats were hope- 
lessly divided between Northern and Southern 
factions, while other dissatisfied elements gath- 
ered under the non-committal name of the 
Constitutional Union Party. With four tickets 
in the field Lincoln obtained only two fifths 
of the popular vote, but he was supported by 
the most united organization and the votes of 
his opponents were so scattered that he suc- 
ceeded in obtaining the majority of the elec- 
toral votes and was accordingly declared Pres- 
ident. 

With his sympathetic understanding of the 
Southern point of view, Woodrow Wilson has 
shown why Lincoln's election meant the parting 
of the ways : — 

The Republicans wished, and meant, to check 
the extension of slavery ; but no one of influence in 
their counsels dreamed of interfering with its exist- 
ence in the States. They explicitly acknowledged 
that its existence'there was perfectly constitutional. 
But the South made no such distinctions. It knew 
only that the party which was hotly intolerant of 
the whole body of southern institutions and inter- 
ests had triumphed in the elections and was about 
to take possession of the government.^ 

^ Division and Reunion (1893), p. 209. 
222 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

Good fighters that they were, the Southern- 
ers took the aggressive, and acted promptly. 
Waiting only to be sure of the result of the 
election, a specially chosen convention in 
South Carolina unanimously adopted "An 
Ordinance to dissolve the union between the 
State of South Carolina and the other States 
united with her under the compact entitled 
'The Constitution of the United States of 
America.'" Before the end of January, 1861, 
six other states from Georgia to Texas had 
passed similar ordinances of secession, and in 
the following month of February together they 
formed the Confederate States of America. 
Their constitution followed closely after that 
of the United States in the general framework 
of government, and the changes are mainly of 
interest because they so sturdily assert the 
Southern side of the sectional controversies 
of the preceding thirty years, including, of 
course, the protection of their cherished insti- 
tution and of the principle of state rights. 

It is idle to discuss whether the 
■^^ Civil War was fought on account 

of slavery or on account of secession. 
Theoretically, and so explicitly declared by Lin- 
coln, the war was fought to preserve the Union. 
But secession, which had been an abstract 
right, was put into actual practice because of 
slavery. It is not too much to say that the 

223 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Southerners were sincerely actuated by high 
motives just as were the Northerners. In the 
assertion of their rights they beheved that they 
were maintaining the principles of Hberty which 
had been estabHshed in 1776, and it seems im- 
possible to exaggerate either their devotion or 
the sacrifices they made in what is sometimes 
still referred to as "The Lost Cause." Nor is 
this inconsistent with recognizing, as in the 
days of the Revolution, underlying economic 
forces that seem to point to purely selfish mo- 
tives. It was simply a case of self-protection. 
In an article in the Atlantic Monthly of January, 
1 861, James Russell Lowell wrote of the free 
states, that, in the eyes of the South, "Their 
crime is the census of i860." ^ 

If the war had been fought in 1830, at the 
time of the nullification controversy, it seems 
certain that the South would have won. War 
did not come then, and it was so long postponed 
because of the close commercial relations be- 
tween the two sections — because of the con- 
cessions which Northern merchants insisted 
should be made to the South. Even in i860 
the two sides were after all not so unequal, for 
the South was a unit and many in the North 
were in sympathy with her, but at this point 
the West became the deciding factor. Sixty per 

* Cited by J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States since 
the Compromise of 1850, in, p. 149. 

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►-<" cT CO >c t-^ cfi c<5 oo" 






d '^ 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

cent of the people in the United States were 
living west of the Allegheny Mountains. The 
agricultural population of the Northwest had 
been in close relations with the South, but 
with the building of railroads the Northwest 
was finding an increasing unity of commercial 
interest with the Northeast. And that was 
only one element. The states and territories 
of the West were, or had been, colonies, and as 
such they were all creations of the Federal Gov- 
ernment, so that their traditions were Federal 
and National rather than sectional. Most im- 
portant of all, the people of the Northwest were 
generally anti-slavery in sentiment. So when 
the differences could no longer be compromised 
nor a decision avoided, the combination of all 
these forces brought the Northwest to the sup- 
port of the Union and threw the balance over- 
whelmingly to the side of the North. 

Contrary to appearances the Panic of 1857 
was an ultimate misfortune to the South. 
Occasioned by speculation, over-expansion of 
bank credits, and too rapid investment in man- 
ufacturing establishments, the financial crisis 
produced its most serious effects in the North- 
em and Western States, while the great staple 
industry of the South was almost undisturbed. 
Cotton crops remained large, prices held firm, 
and although there were of course some conse- 
quences of the panic observable, in general the 

226 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

prosperity of the South continued. DeBow*s 
Review declared: "The wealth of the South is 
permanent and real, that of the North fugitive 
and fictitious." ^ The unfortunate part of it 
was that Southern leaders were confirmed in 
their belief in the supremacy of cotton and went 
into the Civil War persuaded of the truth of 
their shibboleth "Cotton is King!" and con- 
vinced that the world was dependent upon 
them for its supply of this staple. 

The South was disappointed in its failure 
to obtain foreign support, or even recognition, 
which might have materially affected the out- 
come. Great Britain angered the North by 
immediately according the status of belliger- 
ents to the Southerners, but the Federal lead- 
ers themselves were soon forced to take the 
same position, for they could not treat all 
Southerners as insurgents or traitors. Undoubt- 
edly the British upper classes generally either 
sympathized with the South or were not loath 
to see the Union disrupted. Their attitude 
must have been influenced by the conviction 
that the South could not be subdued and there- 
fore would ultimately succeed. This would ex- 
plain the friendliness to the South in allowing 
the Florida and the more famous Alabama to 
be built in England and in permitting them to 
sail, while calmly ignoring the fact, which was 

* Quoted by T. C, Smith, Parties and Slavery, p. i8o. 
227 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

patent to every one, that they were intended 
for the Confederate ser\'ice. The British 
Government was later forced to acknowledge 
its fault and to pay heavily for its failure to 
live up to the obligations of neutrality. 

Americans had always been irritated by the 
superior tone which the British had generally 
assumed toward them, and they resented it all 
the more hotly that American manners and 
culture, at least on the surface, bore out the 
criticisms that were made. The laxity, to put 
it mildly, of the British Government in the case 
of the Alabama was the culminating grievance 
and, as was prophesied at the time, aroused 
bitter feelings from which the friendly relations 
of the two countries suffered for over a genera- 
tion. Nor was this bitterness alleviated by the 
fact that the great body of the British people, 
because of their opposition to slavery, favored 
the North, for Lincoln's specific declaration at 
the outset, that the war was not undertaken 
to abolish slavery but solely to maintain the 
Union, had bewildered and silenced the friends 
of the North. The way in which the operatives 
of the north of England bore the privation and 
suffering which came from cutting off the 
cotton supply was as significant as it was 
touching. When the inevitable happened and 
President Lincoln, as a war measure, late in 
1862, issued his Proclamation of Emancipation, 

228 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

the tide of British public opinion, strengthened 
by Northern victories, turned steadily in favor 
of the Union and manifested itself more and 
more unmistakably. 

It has been roughly estimated that the rela- 
tive strength of the belligerent sections was as 
five to two, and odds as great as that were 
necessary. From the nature of the case it had 
to be aggressive warfare on the part of the 
North, and for years things went badly for that 
section ; indeed, the outlook for the Union was 
not encouraging. Out of mistakes and disap- 
pointment, out of discouragement and even of 
defeat, emerged the soul of a man, melancholy 
to the point of gloom, but purified as by fire, so 
free from all thought of self, so resolute upon 
the saving of his country, and withal from so 
unpromising an exterior that all the world mar- 
veled. Great in his simplicity and simple in his 
greatness, humble in his power and invincible by 
his very humility, Abraham Lincoln held his 
people steady through the long period of trial. 
Time was required, but when the North finally 
found itself and put forth all of its strength 
there could be but one outcome. 

It is claimed, and it might be admitted, at 
least at the outset, that Southern generals 
were superior to Northern generals, and South- 
ern soldiers were the equals of Northern sol- 
diers, for the Confederacy failed not because 

229 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

it was defeated in the field, but because it wci 
starved and crushed into submission. The 
surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox in the 
early spring of 1865 was only the outward and 
visible sign of an inward collapse. In the ab- 
sence of foreign intervention the North had been 
able to maintain and to extend its blockade of 
the Southern ports until finally the South was 
forced to yield. There were other causes, for 
the Confederacy within itself contained some 
disintegrating elements, yet it is safe to say 
that the North was finally victorious because 
of its superior resources. Might does not make 
right, but few could be found to say that the 
outcome of the Civil War should have been 
otherwise. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

With the Compromise of 1850 begins the scholarly History 
of the United States (7 vols., 1892-1906), by James Ford Rhodes. 
A. B. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (1906), presents the rise of 
the slavery question, and T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery 
(1906), gives a good account of that aspect of the period just 
preceding the Civil War. Allen Johnson, in his excellent Life 
of Stephen A. Douglas (190S), hints at the railroad interest 
being the important element in the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 
and the subject is developed at length by Roy Gittinger in the 
Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March, 19 17. Nicolay 
and Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History (10 vols., 1890. 
Abridged, I vol., 1902), is the standard authority for Lincoln's 
life, although many shorter and useful biographies and sketches 
have been written. The recent one, by Lord Charnwood, is 
appreciative and most interesting. 

The Civil War is another subject which has a literature of 
its own. Probably the best short account is that by J. F. 
Rhodes in a single volume, History of the Civil War (1917); 
F. L. Paxson, The Civil War (1911), is also good. John C. 

2?.0 



SLAVERY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

Ropes, Slory of the Civil War (continued by W. O. Livermore, 
1895-1913), presents a careful and critical study of military 
events. Charles Francis Adams, Trans-Atlaiitic Historical 
Solidarity (Oxford Lectures, 1913), is excellent upon the rela- 
tions with Great Britain. 

The four volumes in the Chronicles of America series, Jesse 
Macy, The Anti- Slavery Crusade, William E. Dodd, The Cotton 
Kingdom, N. W. Stephenson, Abraham Lincoln and the Union 
and The Day of the Confederacy, with their different points of 
view, oflfer an unusual study in interpretation. 



CHAPTER XI 

RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

With malice toward none, with charity for 
all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to 
see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we 
are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for 
him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
widow, and his orphan, — to do all which may 
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves, and with all nations. 

So closed on March 4, 1865, the second in- 
augural address of the President who was per- 
haps the only man who could have handled 
the delicate and difficult situation with which 
the United States was confronted at the close 
of the Civil War. Six weeks later Abraham 
Lincoln was dead at an assassin's hands, and 
the South mourned her loss, as did the rest of 
the nation and the world. His successor, the 
Vice-President, Andrew Johnson, was not equal 
to the emergency. As the years pass, recog- 
nizing his ability and his courage, history is 
doing greater justice to President Johnson 
than was formerly the case, but there is no 
disguising the fact that he was lacking in the 
very qualities which seemed to make Lincoln 
so fit for the task. 

232 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

The Southern problem after the 
problem ^^^ ^^^ ^ double one. Externally 

it involved the relation of the se- 
ceded states to the Union, while the internal 
problem was one of adjustment to new condi- 
tions. At its heart, in either case, lay the ques- 
tion of the negro as a citizen or as a laborer. 
The war losses, with which the present gen- 
eration is becoming only too familiar, had to 
be repaired as speedily as possible. Natu- 
rally the Southerner returned to the only way 
he knew, that of the plantation and the grow- 
ing of a few staple products, mainly cotton, 
the price of which in 1865 and 1866 had con- 
tinued high. The plantation system, and 
practically the whole Southern organization, 
social and economic, had been based on negro 
labor in the form of slavery, which had been 
upset and demoralized by the war, and the 
negro generally was unreliable as a laborer 
except when he was made to work. Now, be- 
lieving that the millennium had come, and 
misled by false promises on the part of de- 
signing men, too many of the former slaves 
relapsed into a hopeless state of idleness. 
Southern state legislatures, from industrial 
and social necessity, passed laws — the so- 
called "Black Codes" — which placed "per- 
sons of color" in a separate class, granting 
them ordinary civil rights, but discriminating 

233 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

against them In other things, especially in con- 
nection with contracts for labor and in the 
matter of vagrancy. However justifiable from 
the Southern point of view and even from the 
actual condition of affairs, these laws were 
most impolitic, for to the Northern radicals it 
seemed as if the results of the war were being 
lost and that slavery was being reestablished. 
-pijjj.. The situation was not improved 

teenth after it became involved in poli- 

Amend- tics. This had resulted primarily 
from the Thirteenth Amendment to 
the Constitution, abolishing slavery, which 
was a necessary corollary to the Proclamation 
of Emancipation, for the latter, as a war meas- 
ure, had applied only to the states or parts of 
states specifically designated as "this day in 
rebellion." The amendment had been passed 
by Congress and submitted to the states in 
January, 1865; it was ratified and proclaimed 
in force in December of the same year. In- 
herently of the utmost importance, its politi- 
cal consequences were also far-reaching, be- 
cause only three fifths of the slaves having 
been counted previously in apportioning rep- 
resentation, the abolition of slavery meant 
an increased number of representatives in Con- 
gress from the South. That section had been 
proceeding in the only direction in which it 
could see light by restoring to power the one 

234 , 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

group regarded as fit to control, the former 
governing class, the natural leaders of the 
South. The presidential policy of reconstruc- 
tion, following the main lines laid down by 
Lincoln, tended to the same result. It was 
based on the belief that a loyal class existed 
in the Southern States which ought to be rec- 
ognized and upon which it would be possible 
to rebuild the state governments. Although 
the policy was first carried out by the former 
opponents of secession, it had brought out more 
and more of the natural ruling class, many of 
whom were ex-Confederates. It was simply 
unthinkable to the Republicans, who had 
fought the Civil War through to victory, that 
these men should be allowed to come back 
with increased numbers to Congress, where 
they might by an alliance with the Northern 
Democrats dominate the national legislature. 
<pjjg The political complications are diffi- 

President cult to untangle, but some of the 
^^d threads are conspicuous enough to 

ongress {qJIq^^ and one of these was the quar- 
rel between the President and Congress. The 
two houses had early appointed a joint commit- 
tee on reconstruction and, whether or not one 
approves of the specific measures taken, it 
would seem as if the members of Congress were 
instinctively right in opposing the overween- 
ing power of the President which had grown 

235 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

up in war times. Opposition to the excessive 
power of the executive was bound to arise, it 
would have come no matter who was in office, 
but it was unfortunate that the country did 
not have the benefit of Lincoln's firm and skill- 
ful hand and the advantage of his wisdom in 
this crisis. Senator Sherman said that the 
great defect in President Johnson's character 
was "his unreasoning pugnacity. In his high 
position he could have disregarded criticism, 
but this was not the habit of Johnson. When 
assailed he fought." This characteristic was 
never better exemplified than early in 1866, 
when the difficulties with Congress had be- 
gun. He was only responding to a serenade on 
Washington's Birthday, but in stating his own 
position on reconstruction, the President was 
unwise enough to charge certain members of 
Congress with being "I care not by what name 
you call them — still opposed to the Union." 
When asked to be more specific, he indiscreetly 
yielded: "Suppose I should name to you those 
whom I look upon as being opposed to the 
fundamental principles of this Government, 
and as now laboring to destroy them. I say 
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania; I say 
Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts ; I say Wen- 
dell Phillips, of Massachusetts." 

Such utterances could do no good; instead 
of winning support they aroused antagonism; 

236 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

and from that time the opposition was so far 
strengthened that it was able to muster a two- 
thirds majority in both houses of Congress, 
which made it possible to pass bills over the 
President's veto. The breach continued to 
widen and by the time Congress adjourned in 
the summer both sides were preparing for the 
approaching elections; it was a struggle for 
cpntrol of the new Congress. The President 
-ept on in his unwise and undignified course 
by making a tour of the country which injured 
more than it helped his cause. Congress girded 
itself for the fray by establishing a campaign 
committee, which, under the name of the 
National Congressional Committee, became 
an important factor in the political party sys- 
tem, as it connected the central body more 
closely with local organizations. As a result 
of the elections the opposition to the Presi- 
dent was entrenched in Congress more strongly 
than before. 

The im- Instead of yielding to the inevita- 
peach- ble and recognizing the decision of 

ment the people, in so far as it was ex- 

^*^-^ * pressed in these elections, President 
Johnson persisted in keeping up the 
fight and Congress thereupon brought matters 
to an issue. The opposition almost invariably 
charges the President with improper use of 
patronage, and with that excuse, early in 1867, 

237 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Congress passed — over the executive veto 
as usual — the Tenure of Office Act, which re- 
quired the consent of the Senate to removals 
from office. A few months later the Secretary 
of War, Edwin M. Stanton, refusing to resign 
upon request, the President dismissed him 
from office and, though the Senate withheld 
its consent, appointed a new Secretary of War. 
This was the opportunity for which Congress 
had been waiting and working. It was a dra- 
matic moment in American history when the 
President of the United States, in 1868, was 
formally impeached by the House of Repre- 
sentatives and was brought to trial before the 
Senate. Eleven charges were preferred, al- 
though the only real indictment was disregard 
of the Tenure of Office Act. A two-thirds ma- 
jority was required for conviction, but after 
all sorts of skillful maneuvering the prosecu- 
tion was able to muster only thirty-five votes 
and there were nineteen for acquittal. A 
change of one vote would have found the 
President guilty. 

The tendency at the present time is to re- 
gard the impeachment of the President as a 
mistake, even from the standpoint of partisan 
politics. Johnson may have been unfit to be 
President; he hardly was guilty of crime or 
misdemeanor. Great credit has been given 
to claimants for fame by the friends of one 

238 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

patriot or another, who is said to have cast the 
decisive vote which saved the country in this 
crisis. It is doubtful, however, whether that 
rightly presents the case. Many senators were 
willing to allow the matter to come to a trial, 
which was in itself a condemnation of John- 
son's course ; but at the last any one of several 
would probably have changed his vote so as 
to prevent the actual conviction of the Presi- 
dent, which would have been regarded as a 
misfortune. Johnson was so thoroughly dis- 
credited, that General Grant had only to ob- 
tain the nomination of the Republican Party 
and his election was assured. 

Even in such a summary of events 
struction ^^^ ^^^^ must stand out clearly, 

that in the years following the war 
Congress was increasingly the master of affairs. 
In that capacity it was responsible for the treat- 
ment which was accorded to the South, and 
though no one would now contend that the pol- 
icy followed was altogether wise, it cannot be 
said to have been harsh, if looked at from 
the standpoint of victor and vanquished. The 
leaders in Congress were apparently actuated 
by a variety of motives in which vindictiveness 
was far outweighed by political policy and by 
a genuine interest in the welfare of the former 
slaves. 

The Thirteenth Amendment had emanci- 

239 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

pated the slaves. The Fourteenth Amend- 
ment was designed to protect and to enfran- 
chise them. After declaring that "All persons 
born or naturalized in the United States . . . 
are citizens of the United States and of the 
state wherein they reside," it provided that 
if a state should deny "the right to vote " to 
any citizens the proportion of that state's 
representation in Congress should be reduced 
accordingly. As a further safeguard, but with 
evident political purposes, former office-hold- 
ers who had become Confederates were de- 
barred from holding any office, state or federal, 
unless specially permitted by a two-thirds 
vote of Congress. The last clauses of the first 
section seem to be in keeping with the pur- 
pose of the amendment, but later they be- 
came one of the most effective weapons in the 
arsenal of corporations and so particular at- 
tention is called to them. The clauses read : — 

No State shall make . . . any law which shall 
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of 
the United States ; nor shall any State deprive any 
person of life, liberty or property, without due 
process of law; nor deny to any person within its 
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

The immediate purposes of the amendment 
had been largely provided for in the Civil 
Rights Act and further supplementary legis- 
lation could if necessary have been enacted, 

240 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

but the efficacy of laws might be weakened 
and they might even be repealed, if Southern- 
ers or Democrats should come into power. A 
constitutional amendment was designed to put 
these things beyond the power of parties or 
states. The Fourteenth Amendment there- 
fore became an essential part of the Congres- 
sional plan of reconstruction, and its adoption 
was made a sine qua non of admitting to Con- 
gress the senators or representatives of a se- 
ceded state. The refusal of the Southern States 
to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, in which 
attitude they were encouraged by President 
Johnson, seemed to drive Congress into pass- 
ing the supplementary reconstruction acts by 
which military governments were instituted 
in the Southern States. Under this system 
they were successfully ' * reconstructed ' ' from the 
Congressional point of view, and the Four- 
teenth Amendment was duly accepted by 1868, 
but from the standpoint of the states them- 
selves the method was most unfortunate. The 
former leaders being excluded, control passed 
into the hands of negroes and ignorant whites, 
and men came from other states to take ad- 
vantage of this and to obtain for themselves 
positions of power. They were generally known 
as "carpet-baggers," but if they came from 
the South, and so were regarded as traitors to 
their own class, they were called "scalawags." 

241 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

As may be imagined under such conditions 
the governments were incompetent and ter- 
ribly corrupt. But the blame for this situation 
is not to be laid entirely on Congress or on the 
North. The Southern people were themselves 
intolerant and in some instances were guilty 
of outrageous conduct which led to extreme 
measures against them. 

Even the provisions of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, to prevent withholding of the 
suffrage from negroes, proved ineffective and 
the Fifteenth Amendment was therefore pro- 
posed and adopted (1870), which concisely 
and specifically declared that the right of citi- 
zens to vote should not be "denied or abridged 
... on account of race, color, or previous con- 
dition of servitude." This met the require- 
ments for the time being, but as the years 
passed it was becoming evident that the pol- 
icy which the Government was carrying out 
was more or less of a mistake, and that it was 
wiser to leave control in the South to the South- 
erners themselves, for they could manage their 
own affairs much better than could the North. 

General Grant remained President for eight 
years, and though he had supported Congress 
to a large extent, he had restrained that body 
from going to even greater extremes. The elec- 
tion of 1876 nearly rent the country in twain, 
so close was the contest for the presidency be- 

242 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

tween the Democrat, Samuel J. Til den, and 
the Republican, Rutherford B. Hayes. There 
are many who think, and with reason, that 
the Democrats won the election, but the re- 
turns were disputed and an ingenious and 
elaborate mechanism was devised for estab- 
lishing an impartial commission to determine 
the result. The Republicans were in control of 
the Government, and in spite of all precau- 
tions the deciding vote in the Electoral Com- 
mission was Republican. The outcome was, 
therefore, pretty much of a foregone conclu- 
sion, and in order to keep the Democrats from 
adopting obstructive tactics in Congress, and 
so blocking a decision, the Republican leaders 
offered to withdraw the troops from the South. 
This was agreed to, Hayes was declared elected, 
and one of the first acts of his administration 
was the recall of the soldiers from the South- 
ern States. The period of Reconstruction was 
over. 

For years the whites maintained their su- 
premacy by intimidation and actual violence 
until more peaceful methods were found just 
as effective. The late Senator Benjamin R. 
Tillman, of South Carolina, in a speech in 
1900 was perfectly frank as to what had been 
done : — 

You stood up there and insisted that we give 
these people a "free vote and a fair count." They 

243 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

had it for eight years, as long as the bayonets stood 
there. . . . We preferred to have a United States 
army officer rather than a government of carpet- 
baggers and thieves and scallywags and scoundrels 
who had stolen everything in sight and mortgaged 
posterity; who had run their felonious paws into 
the pockets of posterity by issuing bonds. When 
that happened we took the government away. We 
stuffed the ballot boxes. We shot them. We are 
not ashamed of it. With that system — force, tis- 
sue ballots, etc. — we got tired ourselves. So we 
had a constitutional convention, and we elimi- 
nated, as I said, all of the colored people whom we 
could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amend- 
ments.^ 

The amendments were evaded and the 
negroes disfranchised by means of educational 
and property qualifications, and the whites 
who likewise would have been disqualified 
were exempted through the famous "grand- 
father clauses," by which any one could vote 
who had voted before 1867 or who was a son 
or a grandson of such a voter. Until very re- 
cently the courts, on one pretext or another, 
avoided rendering a decision in so delicate a 
matter. 

It is impossible to consider the his- 
ment ' ^^^ ^^ ^^^ United States after the 

war without taking into account the 
facts that have been related, and yet the "re- 
construction of the Southern States, though 
connected closely with the course of national 
>s, * C. A. Beard, Contemporary American History, p. 8. 
244 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

politics, cannot be regarded as the foremost 
event, or series of events, in the period." The 
growth of the nation, the development of the 
United States into one of the greatest of in- 
dustrial countries, and its recognition as a 
world power are the more important aspects 
of the last fifty years. In that process recon- 
struction was a retarding factor. The other 
side of the Southern story is constructive. 
Recovery after the war was the great and 
immediate need, and labor being essential, 
how to get it was the problem demanding 
solution. The difficulties which led to the pass- 
ing of the "Black Codes" have already been 
referred to, with the unfortunate result of 
bringing about intervention by the North. 
When left to itself, too large a part of the negro 
working population tended to drift into the 
cities. As a labor class it was rendered still 
more restless and unsteady through compe- 
tition and the paying of higher wages, that 
resulted from the great demand for labor, 
especially in Mississippi and Louisiana. 

The planters had a hard lesson to 
South learn, for it was contrary to every- 

thing they had been accustomed to, 
but they were meeting irresistible economic 
forces. By bitter experience they found either 
that they had to give up entirely, or that they 
must take labor on its own terms. Most ne- 

245 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

groes insisted upon becoming independent work- 
men ; a few purchased their farms, some rented 
them, while others were content to work on 
shares; but the result was the same, the planta- 
tions were breaking up. Once it is appreciated 
that this meant the weakening of the foundation 
of the whole Southern social and industrial or- 
ganization, other things seem insignificant, yet 
they cannot be ignored. Large numbers of 
whites, not accustomed to it, were obliged to go 
to work. The country merchant, rising to meet 
the needs of the small farms, became a rel- 
atively important person in the community. 
Small factories also grew up. These indicate 
one phase of the changes and development, 
while another was marked by an exposition 
at Atlanta in 1881. The South was waking up, 
and the Atlanta Exposition not only stimulated 
Southerners to new methods and new activi- 
ties by exhibiting Northern tools and machin- 
ery, but it also revealed to an astonished 
North the industrial as well as the agricultural 
possibilities of the South. From that time on 
the industrialization of the South proceeded 
rapidly, a symptom of which might be found 
in the increasing attraction of foreign immi- 
grants who had formerly shunned that sec- 
tion. 

All of these things meant the creation of 
something practically unknown hitherto in 

246 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

the South, a middle class. It quickly revealed 
itself in educational demands, which displayed 
the ideal, so characteristically American, of 
better educational facilities available to all. 
There was the same ambition for advance- 
ment, the same insistence upon equal oppor- 
tunity for all, that the workingmen's conven- 
tion in Philadelphia had declared in 1839. 

The point of view was taken earlier in this 
history that the United States remained in a 
position of colonial dependence for a long time 
after the Revolution, because foreign mar- 
kets were essential. In the same way it might 
be said of the South that it remained a colo- 
nial section, dependent upon other sections 
and upon the world at large for marketing its 
surplus and for obtaining the products which 
it did not raise itself. The rest of the United 
States had broken its colonial bonds and had 
started on the path of nationalization two 
generations before, at the time of the War of 
18 12. The South had developed in its own 
way, but it had remained a province, — a splen- 
did province, it is true, proud and aloof, yet 
an isolated section, a colonial dependency. 
Through a process of development, economic 
and industrial, through a social transformation 
and a changed attitude of mind, the South 
has grown into its rightful place in the Union. 
The New South is an integral part of the 

247 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

United States; without it the country could 
never have achieved its present position, and 
the South is as proud of it as any other sec- 
tion. 

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS 

The first ten amendments to the Constitution of 
vfte United States, declared to be in force in 1791, 
had been so closely connected with the adoption of 
that instrument by the several states, that they were 
regarded as a part of the original document. Al- 
though hundreds and thousands of other amend- 
ments had been proposed in various ways and at 
different times, down to 1865 only two had been 
adopted : one protecting a sovereign state from be- 
ing sued by citizens of another state, and the other, 
after the controversy over the election of Jefferson 
in 1 801, had simply specified that the electoral votes 
should be cast separately for President and for Vice- 
President. Now, within five years (i 865-1 870) three 
important amendments had been adopted. So dif- 
ficult had it been before, and so difficult did it prove 
afterward, that it became a common saying that to 
amend the Constitution of the United States a civil 
war was necessary. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

J. F. Rhodes's work remains the standard history of the 
United States to 1877. Professor William A. Dunning, of 
Columbia, is the authority on reconstruction, and he has 
gathered about him a group of students, forming almost a 
school on this subject. Probably his own best statement is 
to be found in Reconstruction, Political and Economic {Ameri- 
can Nation series, 1906). The newer point of view, that is on 
the constructive side, will be found in R. P. Brooks, Agrarian 
Revolution in Georgia, 1 865-1 91 2 (191 4), C. M. Thompson, 
Reconstruction i?i Georgia, Economic, Social, Political, 1865- 
i8'72 (1915), and C. C. Pearson, Readjuster Movement in Vir- 
ginia (191 7). 

24$ 



RECONSTRUCTION AND ADJUSTMENT 

Events in the United States since the Civil War have only 
recently been considered history rather than politics, and it is 
therefore difficult to recommend satisfactory historical read- 
ing matter. Quite the best account of the whole period from 
the Civil War to the present is that by F. J. Turner in the 
Encyclopcedia Britannica (nth and last editions), and another 
good short account is that in F. L. Paxson, The New Na- 
tion (1915). A still shorter account is P. L. Haworth, Re- 
construction and Union (1912). C. A. Beard, Contemporary 
American History (1914), is one of the volumes presenting a 
newer point of view. E. B. Andrews, The History of the United 
States, 1 875-1895 (1896, revised as The United States in Our 
Time, 1870-1903), is a readable account. The volumes in the 
American Nation series, of which Professor Dunning's has 
already been mentioned, include E. E. Sparks, National De- 
velopment (1907), J. H. Latane, America as a World Power 
(1907), and D. R. Dewey, National Problems (1907). Ellis A. 
Oberholtzer has begun a detailed History of the United States 
since the Civil War, but only the first volume has appeared 
(1917), carrying the narrative as far as 1868. 

Several textbooks cover the subject in a fairly acceptable 
way, notably J. S. Bassett, Short History of the United States 
(1913), C. R. Fish, Development of American Nationality (1913), 
W. M. West, American History and Government (1913), and 
E. D. Fite, History of the United States (1916). 



CHAPTER XII 
THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

In sharpest contrast to the condition of the 
South during the war was the abounding pros- 
perity of the North and the West. General 
E. B. Alexander, of the Confederacy, leaving 
his command immediately after Appomattox 
to sail from the port of New York, was dum- 
founded at the signs of universal prosperity 
and later remarked that, if the Southerners 
simply could have been escorted through the 
Northern States, the Civil War would have 
ended long before it did. They had believed 
that the North was suffering from the same 
privations which they were enduring. 

It was inevitable that times should be hard 
at the beginning of the war, but it is surpris- 
ing how quickly after the first shock the peo- 
ple of the North adapted themselves to the 
new situation. The well-being of a country so 
largely agricultural as the United States was 
necessarily dependent upon the farmers, and 
during the war not only were the crops good, 
but the harvests were large in spite of the 
shortage of labor, for farm machinery saved 
the work of many hands and women took the 
place of men who were at the front. Even with 

250 



THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

the Increased army demands there was more 
than enough food for home use, and the sur- 
plus was exported at great profit. Other in- 
dustries followed this lead and the accounts 
of mining, of lumbering, of manufacturing, of 
transportation, of everything, were but repe- 
titions of the same story of growth and pros- 
perity. That index of the working-man's state 
and of general conditions as well, the savings 
banks, showed "remarkable increases in the 
number of depositors and amount of depos- 
its." For those days the cost of the war was 
fabulous, the debt incurred running up to some 
three billions of dollars, and yet it was safely 
financed. 

This was not the starting-point, 
^^® for the change had commenced 

stead Act before the Civil War, but the 

United States now proceeded rap- 
idly onward in the career that ultimately 
made it the leading industrial country of the 
world. The greatest source of strength and 
power lay in the West, and the development 
of that section was hastened, oddly enough, 
by the Civil War in altogether unexpected 
ways. In the first place, the withdrawal of 
the Southern members from Congress made it 
possible to secure, in 1862, the adoption of the 
Homestead Act in a form acceptable to the 
President. By this act one hundred and sixty 

251 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

acres of land were offered free to any citizen, 
or even to a prospective citizen, who would 
settle upon and cultivate the tract for five 
years. It was merely an extension of the 
previous land policy of the United States, but 
it marks the culmination of the use of the pub- 
lic domain for encouraging settlement. Under 
its terms approximately a million families have 
been provided for and it has been one of the 
greatest forces in later American development. 
Passed in the same year as the Homestead 
Act, and to be considered along with it, was 
the Morrill Act, which gave to the various 
states, for the development of agricultural and 
mechanical colleges, thirty thousand acres for 
every representative the state might have in 
Congress, and if any state did not possess the 
necessary public lands within its boundaries, 
an equivalent amount of land scrip was given. 

Another way in which the Civil War 
aU^^ad*^ rendered an unexpected service to 

the West was in the enactment of 
legislation for the building of a railroad to the 
Pacific. For years there had been no doubt as 
to the desirability of such a measure; the only 
question was one of location, and with the 
elimination of the Southerners the decision was 
easily reached in favor of the central route. 
In 1862 an act was passed making extensive 
grants for the Union Pacific Railroad, and al- 

252 



THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

though the name would Imply, and many writ- 
ers have asserted, that the justification of this 
act was found in maintaining and strengthen* 
ing national bonds, the union referred to was 
that of different railroads, some of which were 
already in process of construction. By this act, 
for every mile of road that was built the Gov- 
ernment offered ten square miles of the public 
land and a loan of sixteen thousand dollars in 
bonds. Two years later, when this had proved 
to be insufficient, the land grants were doubled 
and the bonding privileges greatly increased. 
Under the stimulus of such a reward the road 
was completed in 1869. 

Important as was the railroad to the Pacific 
it should not be allowed to obscure the less 
spectacular but more generally serviceable 
railway extension that was being made else- 
where. The United States, as a country of 
magnificent distances, is utterly dependent 
upon means of transportation and it has been 
well said that America is essentially the child 
of the railroad. The period of recovery after 
the war was also a period of rapid expansion, 
and so great were the demands for transpor- 
tation facilities that the country went mad 
upon the subject. Between 1865 and 1874 over 
thirty-five thousand miles of road were built, 
doubling the mileage that had been laid in the 
thirty-five yeairs preceding. 

253 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Opportunities existed in abundance 
Imnngra- ., \ , , 

^Q^ it there was any one to take ad- 

vantage of them, and the natural 
increase in population was not sufficient. The 
lack was partially supplied by incoming for- 
eigners. Immigration between i860 and 1870 
amounted to 2,300,000 in spite of the Civil 
War, and in the following decade it increased 
to nearly 3,000,000. Over eighty per cent of 
these immigrants came from the northern 
countries of Europe, including Scandinavia 
and Great Britain, of whom at least a fourth 
and perhaps a third were Germans. It would 
be hard to overestimate the importance of 
immigration in the progress of the United 
States, as over four fifths of the newxomers 
were between fourteen and forty-five years of 
age, and so were reared at the expense of their 
home countries and came to America at the 
most productive period of their lives. The 
part they took in factory production is gen- 
erally appreciated, but they were also of in- 
calculable help in the development of the re- 
sources of the country, the exploiting of mines, 
the building of railroads, and the tilling of 
farms. In other words, they were an active 
force in the growth of the West. 

The mining discoveries in the years after the 
Civil War attracted attention and drew the 
crowds as always, but the forces which have 

254 



THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

been described foretold an expansion of popu- 
lation of a different sort. All the elements 
being present settlement for a time was pro- 
moted on a scale never before witnessed. The 
offer of free land and the prospect of adequate 
transportation facilities, to a people increasing 
from twenty-five to thirty per cent every ten 
years, resulted not in settlement by individual 
families or small groups, but in colonization 
by wholesale. The story is a bewildering one, 
but no more confusing than the kaleidoscopic 
way in which the events themselves occurred. 
_, A first necessity in the develop- 

Indians rnent of the West was the termina- 
tion of the Indian question. From 
earliest days the Federal Government had fol- 
lowed the policy, which it had inherited and 
accepted from the British, of keeping Indians 
and whites separated by a definite boundary 
line. When Louisiana was acquired the policy 
was only modified by removing the Indians 
to the Western country, where it was thought 
they would be isolated and where it was prom- 
ised they might remain forever undisturbed. 
The futility of the promise was shown when 
expansion to the Pacific came. The beginning 
and end of Indian grievances was encroachment 
upon their lands by the whites. The only form 
of effective protest which they knew how to 
make was to fight, and the Indians took advan- 

255 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

tage of the Civil War to protest vigorously 
and often. 

Not long after becoming President, General 
Grant announced a new Indian policy, and 
coming from him it was unexpected, that it 
was cheaper to feed the Indians than to fight 
them. It is manifestly not possible to feed and 
clothe a tribe of Indians if its members are free 
to roam about wherever and whenever they 
please. The new policy, therefore, involved 
restricting the Indians to definite bounds, or, 
to put it plainly, it m^eant confining them on 
reservations. In the Indian Appropriation 
Act of 1 87 1 a clause was inserted that "No 
Indian nation or tribe within the territory of 
the United States shall thereafter be acknowl- 
edged or recognized as an independent nation 
with whom the United States may contract 
by treaty." Independent Indian nationality 
had been a theory only and this declaration 
was simply a formal recognition of a condi- 
tion long existing, but it nevertheless marks 
the beginning of the end. 

The reservation policy inaugurated by Presi- 
dent Grant would probably not have succeeded 
immediately or easily had it not been for the 
extermination of the bison, which had for- 
merly spread in countless numbers over the 
whole North American continent, but were 
gradually restricted until in one great herd 

256 



THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

they occupied the region of the plains. The 
Union Pacific Railroad, completed in 1869, di- 
vided the bison into the northern and south- 
ern herds. According to the great authority 
on the subject, Mr. W. T. Hornaday, between 
1872 and 1874 the whites killed over three 
million and the Indians over five hundred 
thousand of the southern herd; and the north- 
ern herd was exterminated in a similar way 
after the building of the Northern Pacific Rail- 
road. Cutting off one of the greatest sources 
of their food-supply forced the Western In- 
dians into submission, and reservations be- 
came the accepted arrangement. The last 
chapter of the pathetic story was written when 
good land became so scarce that the Indian 
reservations were broken up, on the pretext 
of giving each Indian a liberal amount of land 
for his own, but in reality that the balance 
might be thrown open to the whites. This was 
accomplished by the Dawes Indian Land in 
Severalty Act of 1887. 

Where bison had thrived cattle were 
ranching ^^^^ *^ \vve. The industry was as 

old as the settlement of the conti- 
nent, but in its modern form American cattle- 
raising had developed in the years before the 
Civil War on the great plains of northern Texas, 
where the cattle increased to millions. After 
the war the growing population of the West 

257 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

and the Government demand for feeding the 
Indians offered the markets that were wanted. 
The problem was one of transportation and 
dehvery. When it was discovered that cows 
would fatten on the buffalo grass of the 
northern plains even better than in Texas, 
the problem was solved, and cattle-ranching 
spread rapidly northward over the western sec- 
tion of the United States and even into Can- 
ada. The cowboy became a synonym for the 
West. His picturesque trappings and engag- 
ing behavior, while making him a hero of fic- 
tion and the drama, diverted attention from 
the practical and serviceable work he was do- 
ing, but could not obscure the results. Amer- 
ican cattle were exported to some extent, but 
the invention of refrigerator cars, by which 
in 1869 the first shipment was sent from Chi- 
cago to New York, not only revolutionized 
the slaughtering and meat-packing industry, 
it also carried American beef to all the world. 

The romance of cattle-ranching has gone. 
Like so much else it has yielded to the progress 
of civilization. The old ways were too waste- 
ful. A square mile of land for the grazing of 
every steer, which was a favorite method of 
calculation, was too extravagant when land 
was in demand and came to be at a premium. 
Intensive methods of feeding changed the 
average to a steer for every acre. The en- 

258 



THE GROWTH OF THE WEST 

croachments of the farmers broke up the cat- 
tle ranges. 

_ . . All the elements were present and 

farming conditions ripe for an extraordi- 
nary agricultural development, and 
that was exactly what took place. The United 
States had long supplied its own needs, and 
now it exported its surplus products on a 
large scale and in increasing quantities until 
it achieved the leading place in the world's 
markets as a producer and exporter of bread- 
stuffs and grains. But this involved changes 
that amounted almost to a revolution. In 
production it meant specialization to the 
extent of one-crop farming, and natural re- 
sources were supplemented by increased use 
of improved machinery. In distribution it 
meant classification and grading of grains; it 
meant the use of elevators for storing grain 
in bulk and the use of steam power in handling 
it. Finally the railroads provided the means 
of transportation, and the decline in rates 
made it possible to export at a profit. By way of 
illustration: for the decade ending in i860 the 
exports of Indian corn, or maize, were something 
over fifty million bushels, while in 1880 they 
were nearly nine times as great; and for the 
same period the export of wheat rose from fifty- 
one to five hundred and fifty million bushels. 
Assuredly, prairie farming had justified itself. 

259 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Among many books on such a variety of subjects it is diffi- 
cult to select, but to the titles previously given may be added: 
E. D. Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North dur- 
ing the Civil War (1910); C. F. Adams, Railroads: their Origin 
and Problems (1878; revised edition, 1893); the articles on 
immigration in the Cyclopedia of American Government; J. R. 
Commons, Races and Immigrants in America; F. J. Warne, 
The Immigrant Invasion (1913) and Tide of Immigration (1916); 
Emerson Hough, The Story of tlie Cowboy (1897) and The Pass- 
ing of the Old West (191 8); and F. L. Paxson, Last American 
Frontier (19 10). 



CHAPTER XIII 

A NATION AT WORK 

To Americans it is so much a part of the nat- 
ural order that anything different seems in- 
comprehensible, but freedom of trade between 
the individual states of the Union has been one 
of the greatest agencies in their development 
and prosperity. So the growth of the West 
affected the whole country. Partly in the ex- 
ploitation of new fields, partly in the produc- 
tion of raw materials, but mainly by its de- 
mands upon the other sections, especially after 
increasing its exports of grain, the West was 
in a large measure responsible for the next 
stage of industrial progress in the United States. 
For half a century factories of all 
iversity j^jnt^g ha(j been increasing, and with 
factures the variety and extent of Amer- 
ica's natural resources, which meant 
cheap and apparently unlimited raw materi- 
als, it was inconceivable that manufactured 
goods should continue to be purchased to 
any great extent from abroad; it was only 
a question of time before the country should 
supply practically all of its own needs. The 
process of meeting the home demand was well 
under way before i860; it was checked mo- 

261 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

mentarily by the war, but was again furthered 
by the high war tariffs, and then continued 
uninterruptedly. From the standpoint of in- 
dustry, among the most striking features of 
the years after the Civil War were increase in 
production and diversity in kinds of manufac- 
turing, the result of the efforts to meet the re- 
quirements of home consumption. 

It would be easy but profitless to go through 
a long list of manufactures reported in the offi- 
cial censuses so as to show the increase in and 
variety of production ; the general trend is more 
clearly indicated by the simple statements: 
that between i860 and 1880 the population of 
the United States increased > about sixty per 
cent, while the growth in the value of manu- 
factured goods was over three times as great; 
and that by 1870 less than seven per cent of 
the manufactured goods that were used came 
from abroad. If population increased at a 
fairly steady rate and if, as was the case, agri- 
culture developed on about the same scale while 
manufacturing continued to grow several times 
as fast, there could be but one result. Until 
1880 the United States was regarded as an 
agricultural country, because the annual value 
of the farm products was greater than that of 
manufactures, but by 1890 the balance had 
swung to the other side, and ten years later 
the value of manufactured products was dou- 

262 



A NATION AT WORK 

ble that of agriculture. In 1894 the United 
States attained the place of the leading manu- 
facturing nation of the world. As soon as the 
domestic demand was supplied the next step 
was to enter foreign markets. The growth of 
exports after 1880 is a commanding fact of 
American economic history, and although 
farm products continued to be the largest item, 
manufactures furnished an increasing percent- 
age until they became practically on a par. 

The people of the United States therefore 
changed from an agricultural to an industrial 
population. In the days preceding the Civil 
War, and for a time afterward, the dominant 
interest in the United States had been that of 
the farmers and the leadership had been taken 
by the Southern planter. With the change 
that had come, the controlling influence was 
that of the manufacturer and the interests of 
the planter and the farmer were necessarily 
taking the second place. Professor Fish has 
expressed the difference in a single sentence: 
"The man who would rise out of the ordinary 
in the 6o's went into politics; in the 70's and 
80' s such a man went into business." ^ 

rjyt^ ^ 're A powerful stimulant to the manu- 

Tne tariff . . , . , ^ ^ . , 

factunng growth of the United 

States was the tariff. It had been supposed 

^ Fish, C. R., Development of American Nationality (1913), 
p. 460. 

263 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

that, when finances were restored to more 
normal conditions after the war, taxes would 
be lowered. They were lowered, but only 
those which bore heavily on the productive 
resources of the country — in other words 
the internal taxes. A corresponding diminu- 
tion of import duties should have been made, 
but it was not, and the high war tariffs were 
continued. This was of enormous advantage 
to the manufacturers, but was expensive for 
the consumers, and in 1872 discontent was so 
great that Congress finally agreed to a general 
reduction of ten per cent in all tariff rates. 
This was an unscientific method of procedure, 
for it was not based on any analysis or even 
consideration of the subject ; it was only a short 
cut in answer to the demand for tariff and rev- 
enue reform. 

. Over-production and over-trading, 

jg,_, partly a result of the war tariffs, 

over-development of the West es- 
pecially in the matter of railroad-building, 
and over-investment of capital were the real 
causes of a financial crisis, but they were 
aggravated by a fluctuating currency. The 
retirement of paper money after the war had 
resulted in the establishment of a premium on 
gold. The usual characterization, that it was 
"brief, but sharp," would apply perfectly to 
the Panic of 1873, but the five years following 

264 



A NATION AT WORK 

were a period of declining markets and sur- 
plus goods, of idle mills and idle men, of 
strikes, lockouts, and bankruptcies. The re- 
duction of the tariff had been only a minor 
cause, but it had to bear more than its share 
of the blame, and after the crisis had passed, 
without excitement and almost without com- 
ment. Congress restored the old tariff rates. 

_ With the commercial failures ac- 

Corpora- . , 

tions companymg the panic, partner- 

ships and individual businesses were 
largely replaced by joint-stock corporations. 
So extensively was this resorted to, at the end 
of the five years of depression, that the period 
is sometimes referred to as the beginning of 
corporations in the United States. Such, of 
course, was not the case, for we have already 
seen how joint-stock companies with liability 
limited to the amount of stock subscriptions 
were made use of earlier and to a greater extent 
than in other countries. But such a statement 
at least calls attention to the great growth of 
corporations at that time, which was not 
merely for the protection of capital, but be- 
cause of the extension of business and the in- 
crease of manufacturing concerns. The cor- 
poration, embodying the principles of hmited 
liability, delegated management, and indirect 
ownership, offered a method of carrying on 
business on a large scale which proved so suc- 

265 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

cessful that it made this the preliminary period 
in the history of trusts. 

There was something more in all these hap- 
penings after the Civil War than has yet been 
hinted at. Even the prosperity of the North 
could not hide the fact that the wastage of w^ar 
had been enormous, and from sheer necessity 
the entire country was giving itself up to re- 
covering the loss. The Panic of 1873 was a 
mere incident in a period of feverish activity. 
Other forces combined to bring the United 
States into one of the most dangerous epochs 
of its history. It was the inevitable reaction 
after fighting, when men returned from war 
after long years of brutality and of sordid life 
in the army, with illusions gone and, unfor- 
tunately, with many of their ideals gone, also. 
These men came back to find, too often, that 
the stay-at-homes had grown rich. There had 
been the ordinary irregular practices and a 
great deal of profiteering, whence arose the 
class of "shoddy millionaires," but even those 
who were actuated by patriotic motives and 
at the outbreak of the war had placed their 
factories at the Government's disposal were 
not at all averse to making profits and espe- 
cially when the war continued so much longer 
than had been expected. It was a terrible 
misfortune for the United States in this criti- 
cal time that many of those, who might have 

266 



A NATION AT WORK 

led or at least restrained their generation, had 
been among the first and best to respond to 
their country's call and had been killed in 
fighting. But whatever explanation is offered, 
the fact remains that after the war the people 
of the United States plunged into an orgy of 
business and a wave of materialism swept over 
the country such as it had never experienced be- 
fore. For the first time, to any considerable ex- 
tent, wealth became for Americans an object in 
itself instead of being the emblem of success. 
Of equal and perhaps greater im- 

concen- portance, for economists say that 
tration of f . ' ... . ; , 

industry ^^ is the strikmg feature oi later 

American development, was the 
growing concentration of industry. Almost 
any line of manufacturing could be chosen to 
illustrate the fact that a smaller number of 
establishments put out a greatly increased 
amount of products. The localization of in- 
dustry was usually a forerunner of concentra- 
tion, and one of the earliest and most conspic- 
uous instances was that of pork-packing along 
the Ohio River, and especially at Cincinnati 
after 1833, on account of the corn available 
in the old Northwest, and because of the trans- 
portation facilities of the Ohio and Mississippi 
Rivers. At about the time of the Civil War 
the packing industry was shifted to Chicago 
and the formation of the Union Stock Yards 

267 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES . 

in 1865 was the result of an agreement or an un- 
derstanding between the leading pork-packers, 
and marks an important step in concentration 
and consolidation. 

The railways furnish another illustration 
and seem to have set the example which many 
industries followed. Hundreds of roads, with 
a number of different gauges and an even 
greater variety in rolling stock, could exist 
only during a period of experimentation; self- 
interest in the direction of economy was slowly 
but surely producing its result. Even before 
the Civil War the process of amalgamation 
was under way, but Charles Francis Adams, 
one of the best railroad men of his time, chose 
the Saratoga Conference in 1874 as marking 
the change from the old order to the new, be- 
cause of the effect it produced in getting the 
people accustomed to the idea of consolida- 
tion. Since that time the process has been 
rapid. As a further indication of what was 
taking place, Joseph Keppler, in 1881 with his 
cartoons in Puck, could pillory Jay Gould for 
the consolidation of the telegraph companies. 
A small group of men interested in the oil in- 
dustry had come together in 1879 and in 1882 
the Standard Oil Trust was formed, 
j^ , In his little book on Railroad Trans- 

portation, Mr. Hadley has sucess- 
fully demonstrated that monopolies existed 

268 



A NATION AT WORK 

and were inevitable. It is not necessary to fol- 
low his arguments, for the facts, with which 
we have become only too famiUar, speak for 
themselves. He was describing conditions as 
he saw them, and his work was published 
in 1885. The significance of this must be evi- 
dent: the whole economic policy of the United 
States had been based on the principle of in- 
dividual competition, and that principle was 
being undermined by forces which were irre- 
sistible. 

The Four- ^^ ^^^ ^^^ accidental, therefore, 
teenth that the early eighties saw an unex- 

Amend- pected and to most people aston- 
ishing argument in behalf of cor- 
porations presented to the judicial courts. 
In pleading the San Mateo County case (1882), 
ex-Senator Roscoe Conkling, who had been a 
member of the Congressional Committee on 
Reconstruction, declared that the Fourteenth 
Amendment, which was supposed to have been 
adopted for the benefit of the negroes, had 
also been intended to protect other interests 
"appealing for congressional and administra- 
tive protection against invidious and discrimi- 
nating state and local taxes." The journal of 
the committee seemed to bear out the claim, 
and when the matter finally came up for deci- 
sion by the Supreme Court of the United 
States in the Santa Clara County case in 1886, 

269 



„ DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Mr. Chief Justice Waite, in a preliminary an- 
nouncement said : — 

The Court does not wish to hear argument on 
the question whether the provision in the' Four- 
teenth Amendment to the Constitution, which for- 
bids a State to deny to any person within its juris- 
diction the equal protection of the laws, apph'es 
to these corporations. We are all of the opinion 
that it does. 

This marks an important development in 
American constitutional as well as industrial 
history. The Fourteenth Amendment there- 
by took its place alongside of "the most im- 
portant clause in the Constitution " which 
gave Congress power "To regulate Commerce 
. . . among the several States." Under these 
two provisions every conceivable sort of case 
has been carried into the courts. The Four- 
teenth Amendment was adopted in order to 
bring the protection of the Constitution to the 
enfranchised negroes of the South. Among the 
cases which have come up under it are : — 

A suit to recover the value of a dog in Louisiana 
on which no tax had been paid; the right of a 
preacher to hold meetings on Boston Common; 
the right of a woman lawyer of the District of 
Columbia to practise before the courts of Virginia; 
a suit in New York to recover damages for the ille- 
gal use of the plaintiff's photograph; the sale of 
cigarettes In Tennessee; the regulation of the height 
of buildings in Boston ; the question whether a con- 
victed murderer in Idaho should be hanged by the 

270 



A NATION AT WORK 

sheriff or by the warden ; the question of the sanity 
of a certain man in Alabama; . . . determining the 
amount of damages for a dog bite in Michigan; . . . 
reducing street-car fares for school children in 
Boston; the labeling of mixed paints in North 
Dakota; the selling of game in New York; . . . the 
right of women to vote in Missouri ; and the regu- 
lation of graveyards in California! . . . Yet these 
are but a small number of cases selected at ran- 
dom.^ 

When it is appreciated that every sort of 
subject could be brought within the scope of 
the Fourteenth Amendment, and that a cor- 
poration was a "person" in the eyes of the 
court, only one thing more is necessary to 
understanding the value of this to corporations 
or rather to selfish business interests. Until 
very recently changed by federal statute, when 
a state court declared a state law invalid 
because it was in conflict with the federal Con- 
stitution or with a federal statute, there was 
no appeal to the Supreme Court of the United 
States. It was only when the local decision 
was against the federal instrument that appeals 
could go to the federal courts. Accordingly 
the Fourteenth Amendment meant in each 
state what the highest court of that state 
wanted it to mean, and hundreds of laws were 
nullified by the action of state courts. Pro- 
fessor Edward S. Corwin is quoted as saying 

^ Collins, C. W., The Fourteenth Amendment and the States 
(1912), pp. 31-33. 

271 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES ., 

that " ' due process of law * is not a regular con- 
cept at all, but merely a roving commission 
to judges to sink whatever legislative craft 
may appear to them, from the standpoint of 
vested interests, to be of a piratical tendency." 
In Lochner vs. New York (1905) the Su- 
preme Court declared a New York law null 
and void because it limited work in bake-shops 
to ten hours a day, and the right to contract 
with regard to hours of labor was a part of 
the "liberty" protected by the Fourteenth 
Amendment. In dissenting from the decision 
Mr. Justice Holmes protested that the Four- 
teenth Amendment did not "enact Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer's Social Statics." It was the 
freedom, one might say the recklessness, with 
which the courts nullified laws that was 
largely responsible for the growth of popular 
feeling against the judiciary and led to a de- 
mand for the recall of judges. 

_, , - As we look back after thirty years* 
The laoor , , . , 

question experience and see mdustry grow- 
ing and concentrating even to the 
extent of monopoly, and realize that Ameri- 
can institutions had been shaped with protec- 
tion of property and encouragement of capi- 
tal as primary objects, it is easy to understand 
why trouble with labor was inevitable. The 
local organization of separate trades in the 
United States dates back to the end of the 

272 



A NATION AT WORK 

eighteenth century, and though unions of dif- 
ferent trades were estabh'shed as early as 1827, 
their activities had been rather a part of the 
humanitarian movement, and they became of 
greater national importance only after the 
Civil War, especially with the organization of 
the Knights of Labor. The Panic of 1873 was 
accompanied with the usual hard times and 
wage reductions and was followed by the 
usual strikes, which In this Instance revealed 
the growing strength of the labor organiza- 
tions. 

A fundamental cause of the difficulty be- 
tween labor and capital was that America had 
always been noted for the high pay which 
labor could command. Wages both real and 
nominal had tended to Increase rapidly, and 
in the period between i860 and 1880 they were 
said to have risen over forty per cent. The 
greater benefits labor received, the more in- 
telligent it became, the greater power it 
achieved and the greater the share It demanded 
as Its right. The employer, on the other hand, 
was resentful because he considered the work- 
ing-men ungrateful when they were better 
paid than anywhere else In the world. Such 
was the situation when the concentration of 
industry Is observable in the early eighties. 
The Importance of labor is shown by the crea- 
tion of a Commissioner of Labor under the 

273 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

Department of the Interior in 1884, and it is 
not accidental that the Knights of Labor num- 
bered nearly three quarters of a million mem- 
bers in 1886, nor that that year showed a new 
high-water mark in strikes. 

As manufacturing developed to the 
tion point where the United States be- 

came a factor in the world's markets, 
that is, when the export of manufactures be- 
came an important feature, the necessity for 
economy in production arose. A natural step 
for employers to take under such circumstances 
was to bring immigrants from different parts 
of the world in an effort to obtain cheaper 
labor. Professor Commons has well said that 
the competition between races is a competition 
in standards of living, and in the search for 
cheaper labor in the United States "the ends 
of the earth have been ransacked." A variety 
of races also made organization of workmen 
more difficult; where many languages and 
dialects were spoken, a union on a common 
basis was long impossible; and employers were 
unquestionably following such a policy delib- 
erately. 

The change in the character of immigration 
to America is noticeable after 1880, as there 
was a marked falling off in the proportion of 
those coming from the northern countries of 
Europe and a corresponding increase of those 

274 



A NATION AT WORK 

from other lands. In the decade before 1880 
immigration had amounted to nearly three 
millions and was considered astonishingly 
large, yet in the next decade it increased to 
over five millions, and between 1900 and 19 10 
it jumped to over eight and a quarter millions. 
By 1907 previous percentages were almost ex- 
actly reversed: less than seventeen per cent 
of the incoming foreigners were from Germany, 
Scandinavia, and Great Britain, and over sev- 
enty-five per cent were coming from Italy, 
Austria, Russia, and Poland. 

The great industrial problem of the United 
States in its earlier years had been one of pro- 
duction and from that standpoint, as previ- 
ously noticed, immigration was of enormous 
assistance, for the difficulty had been how to 
get labor and not how to treat it. But a new 
problem was arising. The policy of the United 
States had been based on the principle of indi- 
vidual competition. With the breaking-down 
of competition came increasing fortunes for 
captains of industry, while the relatively low 
wages maintained through rivalry of races 
meant that a comparatively small share went 
to labor. The new problem with which the 
United States came face to face, really for the 
first time, was the distribution of profits and 
of wealth. 

275 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the United States, is the 
best general sketch of the subject, but special works must be 
used to supplement on particular topics. Among the most 
Useful of these are: C. F. Adams, Railroads: their Origin and 
Problems (1878; revised edition, 1893); A. T. Hadley, Rail- 
road Transportation, its History and its Laws (first printed in 
1885, but several subsequent editions have appeared); C. W. 
Collins, The Fourteenth Amendment and the States (1912); 
Hannis Taylor, Origin and Growth of the American Constitu- 
tion (191 1); William Z. Ripley, editor. Trusts, Pools and Cor- 
porations (1905); John R. Commons et al.. History of Labour 
in the United States (2 vols., 1918); and F. J. Warne, The 
Immigrant Invasion (1913). 



CHAPTER XIV 

BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

The Republican Party after the Civil War 
was very different from what it had been orig- 
inally. Such varied elements and factions and 
classes had combined with the primary pur- 
pose of winning the war that in the election 
of 1864 the party had called itself "Union." 
But later, as it emerged with new leaders and 
with new policies, it went back to the old name 
to which clung the prestige of the claim that 
the Republican Party had fought and won the 
war, and therewith preserved the Union. Loy- 
alty and patriotism were thus called in to 
strengthen party allegiance and enthusiasm. 
The war also affected politics through the ac- 
ceptance of military standards, of subordina- 
tion to leaders, of implicit obedience, and with 
little inclination to question methods provided 
quick action and speedy results were achieved. 

Party organization had existed be- 
machine ^^^^' with a system of committees, 

conventions, and delegates, but it 
was clumsy, and only under the new conditions 
did it get to "working like a machine" and to 
running so smoothly that "machine" became 
the name that was commonly applied. PoHti- 

277 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

cal theorists have been inclined to attach con- 
siderable importance to the organization of a 
Congressional Campaign Committee to help 
win the elections of 1866 in the fight with Presi- 
dent Johnson. Through this committee, which 
was made up of one member from each state, 
local politics and the local machine were linked 
up with the national party organization. Serv- 
iceable as this may have been in uniting sep- 
arated elements, it would seem as if a more 
important agency had been the steady improve- 
ment in means of communication coming from 
railroads, the telegraph, and newspapers, so 
that all sections of the country and all locali- 
ties were kept in close touch with one another, 
making it possible to fit the pieces of the party 
machinery together. An equally important 
factor was in the disorganization of the old 
party system before and after, as well as dur- 
ing, the Civil War owing to external condi- 
tions, and in new powers getting control. It 
was as inevitable as the corporation and it 
was in a sense modeled thereafter. Efificiency 
in politics was obtained by organization and 
one-man power, just as it was in the business 
world. 

The rise of the boss system in politics was 
closely connected with the material growth 
of the United States. Business could adjust 
itself to almost any conditions, but it desired 

278 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

those con/ditions to remain stable and it relied 
upon the Government to maintain them. 
Sometimes more direct favors were asked for, 
but whatever was wanted business demanded 
results. The boss system made for efficiency, 
and one-man power was easier for business 
to deal with. Indeed, the boss was an almost 
inevitable phase in the existence of a class of 
professional politicians, and the system was 
not established by any sudden stroke, but so 
gradually that it was unperceived. Before 
they had grown to arrogance and pride of 
power, the men who were running the ma- 
chine tried to find out what their constituents 
wanted, and they were successful politicians 
who met those demands so far as was possible 
and without friction. 

The domi- ^^^ bosses began, of course, in the 
nance of smaller local organizations, but with 
^® the growth and spread of the sys- 

tem they were soon entering Con- 
gress from where they could control affairs al- 
most as well as they could at home and where 
they had greater influence and power. But 
while this was in process of evolution another 
important modification in the national legis- 
lative body was disclosing itself. This was in 
the astonishing power, amounting to domina- 
tion, exercised by the Senate. The upper 
house, in its stability through a longer term of 

279 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

office, by its approval being required both in 
appointments and for the ratification of trea- 
ties, and by its dignity as the highest court of 
impeachment, possessed the attributes of a 
superior body. In other words, the stage was 
ready, but the events were more or less acci- 
dental that brought the Senate into the lead- 
ing role. 

The struggle with President Johnson hap- 
pened to take a form in which the success of 
Congress was to the great advantage of the 
upper house, for the Tenure of Office Act 
placed removals from office at the discretion 
of the Senate. Inasmuch as the consent of 
that body was necessary before the original 
appointment could be made, it is easy to see 
that, if united action could be obtained, the 
Senate might control appointments absolutely. 
It was here that the smaller senatorial body, 
rendering concerted action possible, probably 
developed its most important consequences. 
In the years before the Civil War, it had been 
the practice for congressional delegates to sug- 
gest and to a certain extent to dictate appoint- 
ments to federal offices within their states. 
This now hardened into the custom of the 
"courtesy of the Senate," which meant that 
the upper house would refuse to ratify an ap- 
pointment unless approved by the senators 
from the state in which the appointment was 

280 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

made. It was virtually making "the President 
a mere clerk to transmit nominations handed 
him unofficially by the Individual senators." 

The House of Representatives as a body 
gained nothing in comparison with this, and 
we observe the unusual condition, especially 
in a republic, of the power of the upper house 
increasing when in most countries it was being 
reduced. During Grant's administration, ow- 
ing partly to the inexperience of the President 
in matters of civil government, senators were 
able to exert their Influence to the extent of 
imposing upon him their point of view and, 
except in isolated instances, they were rarely 
thwarted by Grant's successors. In comment- 
ing upon the difference in the practice of re- 
cent years. Senator Hoar, in his Autobiography, 
said that when he had gone into Congress 
"the Senators went to the White House to 
give advice to the President, not to take advice 
from him." 

The method of manipulation to produce re- 
sults is of little consequence. The dominant 
Speaker and his Committee on Rules in the 
House, and a Committee on Committees which 
served as a "steering committee " in the Sen- 
ate, are merely incidental: "A small Inner cir- 
cle was formed in each house of Congress 
which ruled the party as an ordinary boss rules 
the machine." The caucus was the meeting 

281 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the members of a legislative body who were 
of the same political faith, and it has been well 
said that while it was the highest expression 
of majority rule, it was servile to the com- 
mands of party leaders, shut out publicity 
and responsibility, and opened the way for 
corruption and sinister influences. The more 
important feature is that, with the develop- 
ment of party organization and with the con- 
trol of patronage, the Senate became the head 
of the political machine. It had the whip hand 
over the House of Representatives, for, if the 
members of the latter body wished to obtain 
a share of the spoils, they must submit to the 
senators who controlled the political appoint- 
ments in their districts. The Senate accord- 
ingly became the desirable abiding-place for 
the state bosses or for those who were accept- 
able to them. One of our sanest writers on 
political subjects could recently assert that 
''Pennsylvania is preeminently the state of a 
boss " ; and that its "political history for the last 
fifty years has been the history of its senators." ^ 
The Senate was the controlling 

Republi- organ of the Government and the 
cans m ^^ , ,. , ,,. 

power Republicans were the controlling 

party in the Senate. In fifty years 

after the outbreak of the Civil War there was 

^ Jesse Macy, in Cyclopedia of American Government (1914), 
II, pp. 636, 637. 

282 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

a Republican majority in the Senate four fifths 
of the time. During two thirds of that period 
the Repubhcans also controlled the House of 
Representatives, and the only Democratic Pres- 
ident was Grover Cleveland, who was twice 
elected, in 1884 and 1892. James A. Garfield 
was chosen in 1880 to succeed President 
Hayes, but was foully assassinated a few 
months after entering office, and his place was 
taken by the Vice-President, Chester A. Arthur. 
Then came Cleveland, and between his two 
terms Benjamin Harrison was President from 
1889 to 1893. After Cleveland's second term 
was finished, in 1897, the Republican succes- 
sion was unbroken until President Wilson's 
election in 1912. In this long period of ascend- 
ancy the Republican Party was responsible 
for the organization, such as it was, of the 
federal finances; it was answerable for the 
maintenance of the war tariffs, until a high 
tariff had become the normal order; and busi- 
ness had grown accustomed to these things. 
Business corporations wanted the support of 
Government; the Republicans were the party 
in power and wanted the support of business; 
and so the two drew together naturally and 
almost unconsciously. The Republican Party, 
which originated in the West as a party of 
revolt against the complaisance of the estab- 
lished order, which had won its way to politi- 

283 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

cal power essentially as a party of the people, 
and which had fought the Civil War as a na- 
tional party, gradually shifted over until it be- 
came the party of business interests. It was 
the party of bankers and manufacturers of 
the cities of the East, rather than the party of 
the agricultural states of the West. 

_, . Corruption of law-makers was no 

uusincss 

in politics ^^^ thing, for whenever a legisla- 
tive body had something of worth 
in its gift, a purchaser was apt to be found. 
We have seen that the adoption of the Ordi- 
nance of 1787 was not above suspicion. When 
the first United States Bank expired in 181 1, 
state bank charters became of value, and in 
New York, as a special act of incorporation 
was required in each case, bribery of the legis- 
lature became the accepted method of obtain- 
ing a charter. The building of the Pennsyl- 
vania Highway, beginning with the Act of 
1827, was accompanied by irregular and cor- 
rupt practices, quite in the modern style, and 
a legislative committee in 1841 reported "that 
within the period of a single year, by the pol- 
icy and practices which have prevailed, the 
public money, to a large amount, has been 
squandered and improperly paid away." ^ 

^ Quoted by Avard L. Bishop, The State Works of Pennsyl- 
vania (1907), p. 235. 

284 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

The principal difference in the later condi- 
tions was that they invited temptation. Better 
means of communication were so important 
for Americans that improvement and trans- 
portation companies were a favorite form of 
investment, or of speculation. Railroads were 
so much wanted that it was the custom not 
merely to permit their companies to organize, 
but to encourage them by granting special 
favors. When many companies grew rich, or 
at least made money for the promoters, lobby- 
ing to obtain special franchises became the 
ordinary method of procedure. There is but 
one outcome to such a situation ; it may begin 
with irregular practices, it is sure to result in 
direct bribery. 

In the decade before the Civil War one finds 
many references to corruption in politics, and 
they become more frequent in the years after 
the war. This might be attributed to the wide- 
spread materialism of the time, but the better 
explanation lies in the frenzy for expansion 
and development which led to excessive rail- 
road-building and in the alliance of business 
and politics. The railroads were the head and 
front of the offending, or rather they set the 
pace which the others followed. Their officials 
seemed to be the first to have become imbued 
with the idea that they were a privileged class 
because they were rendering a service to the 

285 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

people, and it grew into a spirit of arrogance, 
unless it was bravado that led them frankly 
to show their attitude and to reveal their 
practices. If the railroads were the teachers, 
big business was an apt pupil and soon sur- 
passed its master. 

The development that has been sketched 
could not take place without being appreciated 
more or less clearly throughout the country. 
When the disclosures of the Tweed Ring scan- 
dals in New York were made in 1871, the peo- 
ple seem to have been shocked not so much 
by the fact of the corruption as by the char- 
acter and extent of the "graft." Even then it 
was regarded rather as a local affair, although 
the revelation that a Wall Street broker dared 
to go upon Tweed's bail bond seemed to point 
to a sinister alliance between business and pol- 
itics. To future historians or interpreters of 
events it may prove of almost equal signifi- 
cance that the New York Times found it was 
good journalism and profitable to expose the 
whole sordid affair. 

Nor could the development be ap- 
P W' preciated without arousing consid- 
cans erable opposition. The Liberal Re- 

publicans in 1872 started the first 
of the third-party movements after the Civil 
War, and while it arose immediately out of 
dissatisfaction with the reconstruction policy, 

286 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

it gathered up a variety of discontented ele- 
ments and included those who were opposed 
to the tariff and those who were suspicious of 
the general and widespread corruption. There 
was a chance for the success of this reform 
movement until the mistake was made of plac- 
ing the enthusiastic and well-intentioned but 
erratic reformer, Horace Greeley, at the head 
of the ticket; when Grant, with his great per- 
sonal popularity, was easily reelected. 

Corruption was only one of the 
tent forces making for discontent. The 

exploitation of the country's re- 
sources by individuals, who may not have 
been so much favored as they were far-sighted 
or lucky, and the promotion of manufacturing 
in a country which had been agricultural would 
seem inevitably to work hardship upon the 
former predominant class, the farmers, and 
the earliest manifestations of dissatisfaction ap- 
peared in the agricultural states of the West. 
Although not rising as yet to the dignity of an 
independent political party, the Granger move- 
ment in the West was significant for the fu- 
ture. The farmers were looking to Government 
for relief. They were inclined to ascribe their 
troubles to a large extent to the railroads, and 
to make those organizations the central point 
of their attack. In a series of so-called Gran- 
ger Laws, which were passed by several of 

287 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Western States about 1873, a direct effort 
was made to regulate rates and by the estab- 
Hshment of commissions to control ware- 
houses and shipping facilities. Owing to the 
panic and its effects, these laws were never 
given a fair trial and they were in most cases 
subsequently repealed, but a new doctrine 
had been promulgated in the United States, 
and was upheld by the Supreme Court in Munn 
vs. the State of Illinois (1877), that railroads 
were public utilities and as such amenable 
to state control. The Granger movement in 
politics subsided for a time, yet its reforms 
and ideas became of importance in later years, 
for the tide of discontent was not checked, 
but was rising and swelling. 
P , Another phase of the growing dis- 

satisfaction was expressed in the 
Civil Service Reform movement. A common 
method of raising political funds for meeting 
party expenses had been by the assessment of 
ofhce-holders. The party organization being 
generally held responsible for existing condi- 
tions, it seemed as if the best measure for 
breaking it up was to take away its financial 
support. If merit were substituted for party 
service as the basis of appointment, and if 
assessments were cut off, it might be possible 
to destroy the machine. There always had 
been men working for the betterment of the 

288 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

civil service, and the agitation for reform was 
of early origin, but something more was neces- 
sary to arouse the mass of the people. The 
presidential election of 1880 was significant 
for the efforts of the Republican machine to 
control the national convention. A compel- 
ling motive, therefore, was found in the grow- 
ing antagonism to the political machine, and 
an immediate cause for action came in 1881 
through President Garfield's assassination by 
a disappointed office-seeker. Even then it is 
doubtful if the politicians would have acted had 
it not been for the congressional elections of 
1882, which resulted in a great Democratic 
victory and pointed to a similar result in the 
choice of a President two years later. The 
Republicans were ready to run to cover and, 
as civil service reform would prevent partisan 
removals, just before losing control of the 
House, in 1883, they passed the Pendleton 
Act, which still stands as the basis of the re- 
formed civil service of the United States. 

To the surprise and disgust of its supporters, 
the Pendleton Act did not achieve anything 
approaching what had been expected of it. 
The reform spread and ultimately succeeded 
in improving the service to an extent almost 
unbelievable, when the conditions before its 
adoption are considered; but progress was so 
slow, especially at the start, that it seemed as 

289 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

if nothing worth while had been accompUshed. 
The more disappointing aspect was that the 
reform failed in one of its chief purposes, that 
of weakening the poHtical machine by for- 
bidding the party assessment of federal office- 
holders. It is impossible to run a machine 
without oil ; and when their regular supply was 
cut off the party managers turned to another 
source, from which they had previously re- 
ceived some aid. They applied to large busi- 
ness corporations, which were ready and even 
glad to contribute, but of course expected a 
return. Party finances were more easily and 
more generously supplied than ever. 

This cemented the union between business 
and politics; and business was non-partisan. 
"Where the treasure is, there will the heart 
be also." Perhaps business favored the Re- 
publican Party somewhat because of its prin- 
ciples and policies, but the Republicans were 
supported primarily because they were the 
party in power. "The statement of a railroad 
magnate, that in Republican counties he was 
a Republican, and in Democratic counties he 
was a Democrat, but that everywhere he was 
for the railroad, was the cynical admission of 
an attitude easily understood." ^ It might be 
better to say that business was bi-partisan, for 
that is the form which the political organiza- 

^ Setli Low, The Trend oj the Century, p. 20. 
290 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

tion took in many of the state legislatures, a 
combination acting through corrupt leaders of 
both parties irrespective of party affiliations. 
Business With bosses in Congress, with the 
and the overweening power of the Senate, 
Senate ^^^ ^-^j^ ^j^^ alliance between busi- 
ness and politics, it should be clear why and how 
the representatives of big business went into the 
Senate in their own persons or saw to it, upon 
agreement with the party bosses, that the men 
sent were sure to be favorable to business inter- 
ests. There is no more striking illustration of the 
power of the Senate and of the way in which 
it was used to favor special interests, than is 
to be found in the making of tariff laws. By 
the Constitution, which embodied the British 
tradition, the lower house as representative of 
the people was given sole power to initiate 
revenue bills, but the upper house was not 
prevented from amending and, with its su- 
perior organization and power, the privilege 
of amendment was carried to undreamed-of 
lengths. To a measure which came from the 
House hundreds and hundreds of amendments 
might be made, or an entirely new bill might 
be substituted for it. When the differences 
were finally referred to a conference committee 
of the two houses, the senatorial members al- 
most invariably won out. The manipulation 
of tariff legislation of recent years, which is 

291 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

common knowledge, is justly laid at the door 
of the Senate. 

When civil service reform failed 
ballot ^° break the political machine, 

which only became more arrogant 
and more corrupt with its increased funds, 
another remedy was sought in changing the 
method of voting. Bribery at elections ob- 
tained and was believed to be even more wide- 
spread than the facts seem to warrant, so that 
while the actual use of money in the election 
of 1888 was bad enough, the stories of it grew 
into a scandal. Claiming that, if the ballot 
were secret and men were free to vote in ac- 
cordance with their convictions, bribery would 
be vain, the Australian ballot became the 
panacea. First adopted in Massachusetts, 
after the election of 1888, it spread like wild- 
fire and was in force in most of the states within 
a very few years. Again the reformers were dis- 
appointed, and there is even ground for claim- 
ing that the Australian ballot strengthened 
party organization. Certain it is that the 
party machine was quick to seize the advan- 
tage. In grouping the candidates under party 
names and symbols in order to place all parties 
on a footing of equality, legal recognition was 
given to the party organization, which had 
never been accorded to it before. 

292 



BUSINESS AND POLITICS 

The politicians were able men, in general 
far shrewder than the reformers, and quickl}'' 
adjusted themselves to new conditions. Long 
before the "good citizen" even thought of the 
danger, the boss had ingratiated himself with 
the newly arrived immigrants, and in their 
ignorance was able to swing their votes at his 
will. Each reform had taken years of agita- 
tion before adoption and years of trial after- 
ward. Each had accomplished something, but 
had fallen far short of perfection. It is sur- 
prising that the people still retained faith in 
any remedies, but hope springs eternal and 
every new plan was able to rally ardent sup- 
porters. To the thoughtful observer, however, 
it was evident that the root of the trouble had 
not been found and that something more radi- 
cal or something entirely different was neces- 
sary. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bryce's American Commonwealth is in a class by itself as 
describing political conditions in the United States prior to 
the appearance of the first edition in 1888; subsequent edi- 
tions have not improved it in this respect. The character of 
Professor Jesse Macy's work has already been referred to in 
the text, and his articles in the Cyclopedia of American Gov- 
ernment are especially to be commended. More connected 
accounts will be found in his Political Parties in the United 
States, 1846-1861 (1900), and Party Organization and Maclmt- 
ery (1904). Other books on this subject which have already 
been referred to are M. I. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the 
Party System in the United States (19 10), H. J. Ford, Rise and 
Growth of American Politics (1898), and A. T. Hadley, Under- 
currents in American Politics (1915). Books to be recommended 
upon their special subjects are S. J. Buck, The Granger Move- 

293 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ment (1913), F. E. Haynes, Third Party Movements (1916), and 
C. R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (1905). 

Among the useful memoirs of the period are: J. G. Blaine, 
Twenty Years of Congress (2 vols., 1 884-1886); Carl Schurz, 
Reminiscences (3 vols., 1907-1908); Hugh McCulloch Men and 
Measures of HcUf a Century (1888); G. F. Hoar, Autobiography 
of Seventy Years (2 vols., 1903); and John Sherman, Recol- 
lections of Forty Years (1894). 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SECOND GENERATION 

The progress of the United States, ordinarily 
running smoothly and steadily onward, has 
been occasionally interrupted; its course may 
have been retarded or it may have been stimu- 
lated, the regularity of the flow was broken. 
Oftentimes the interruption was but momen- 
tary or of little consequence, and only rarely 
has it been of great importance. The most 
striking instance of the latter sort was observed 
at the time of the War of 1812, and now there 
came a similar extraordinary period about 
1890. The forces at work were many, corre- 
sponding to the complexity of modern life, 
and if traced out one by one each seems to 
show a fairly normal activity with only a slight 
acceleration at the time mentioned. Yet the 
sum of all the changes resulting shows a total 
so large as to warrant considering the second 
generation after the Civil War the most im- 
portant period in the history of the United 
States since the generation after the Revolu- 
tion. Perhaps an important agency is found 
in the phrase just used, which is taken as 
the title for this chapter, that the generation 
of the Civil War was passing and another 

295 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

generation was coming on the stage with new 
purposes and fresh ideas. 

. . Prosperity undoubtedly had much 

Amencan i • i i ^ r 

idealism ^° ^^ with the new order, for pros- 
perity meant that more and more 
Americans were free from the everlasting drive 
of merely making a living, and that leisure and 
opportunity were given for other things. The 
rise of sport, the adoption of baseball as the 
national game, and the increasing enjoyment 
in being out of doors gave a wholesome turn 
to their point of view, and it might well be 
claimed that the regenerating force in Ameri- 
can life was the introduction of the "safety 
bicycle" from England in 1885, especially with 
its widespread popularity through the inven- 
tion of the pneumatic tire in 1888. These were 
controlling factors in setting the standards and 
in moulding the ideals of the new generation. 
A strain of practicality had manifested itself 
in 18 15 and it is doubtless true that the mate- 
rialism of the period after the Civil War in- 
fluenced somev/hat the ideals that were taking 
shape, and yet they were thoroughly in keep- 
ing with American character. Sensitive, artis- 
tic minds, especially of other nations, some- 
times sneer at those ideals as materialistic, 
and perhaps they are. But they do not seem 
so to Americans who recognize their practical 
cast, for the essence of their idealism is serv- 

296 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

ice to mankind. And American scholars keep 
step with their countrymen: "Not truth for 
truth's sake, but truth for life's sake," is their 
creed. 

In other respects also the Americans of this 
era bred true to type and never more so than 
in the matter of education. Compulsory school- 
ing for all of younger years is a necessary step 
in raising the level of the masses and is hardly 
a distinguishing feature. The conspicuous 
thing in the American system is the contin- 
uance of the higher stages of education at 
public expense, even to the university and in 
research, and the opening of those opportuni- 
ties to practically every one who will take 
advantage of them. The working-men's de- 
mands of 1839 have been realized beyond their 
wildest dreams. 

It would be possible to show a similar de- 
velopment in almost every phase of American 
life: The Columbian Exposition at Chicago 
in 1893 revealed unexpected possibilities in 
the field of civic architecture, and also indi- 
cated a deeper appreciation among the people 
of all things artistic; it was the day of yellow 
journalism, as well as of an awakening in lit- 
erature; heresy trials in the churches pro- 
claimed the revolt against outworn creeds, 
for the demand was insistent that the needs 
of the time should be met, and fresh enthu- 

297 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

siasm was aroused for every scheme of social 
betterment. These instances are chosen at 
random and they were but outward manifes- 
tations, themselves only slightly affecting the 
direction in which events were turning; the 
compelling cause lay deeper. If there be any 
value in the sketch of American development 
that has been attempted in this book, it must 
lie in the recognition that a great variety of 
forces produced the modern American and in the 
presentation of elements sometimes neglected. 
A careful survey of these and of others in this 
particular period leads to the conclusion that 
in most respects conditions were normal, that 
prpgress was uniform, and that the unusual is 
to be found in connection with free land. 

For years the Commissioners of 
e end ^j^^ Land Office in their annual re- 
^^^r^® 111 ti- 

land ports had been callmg attention to 

the decrease in the public domain 
and to a threatened shortage of desirable lands. 
The shocking extravagance which had charac- 
terized the whole public land policy, with its 
exploitation of natural resources, had been 
accompanied by criminal waste and fraudu- 
lent abuse of land privileges by cattlemen, by 
lumbermen, and by corporations, especially 
railroads. The Dawes Act of 1887, which per- 
mitted the break-up of the Indian reserva- 
tions in order to open to white settlement what- 

298 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

ever land was left over, discloses the condi- 
tion. The growing scarcity of available land 
focused attention upon the subject and coin- 
cided with far-sighted scientific projects for 
reclamation of the arid lands and for preser- 
vation of the forests. An irrigation survey was 
begun in 1888. The previous year a Division of 
Forestry was established in the Department 
of the Interior, and the first Forest Reserve 
was made in 1891. Conservation had begun. 
In his address as President of the Ameri- 
can Historical Association in 19 10, Professor 
Turner pointed to the significance of this 
change in policy, that it meant a conversion 
from "the ideal of individual freedom to com- 
pete unrestrictedly for the resources of a con- 
tinent" to the ideal of restricting individual 
competition for the benefit of society. In his 
earlier article on the frontier, Turner had 
taken the census announcement of 1890, that 
it would no longer include a frontier line on its 
population maps, as the basis for his declara- 
tion that "the frontier has gone, and with it 
has closed the first period of American his- 
tory." 

An agency that had been active from earli- 
est colonial times and regarded by many as the 
greatest force in American history was losing 
its strength. The coincidence of this with the 
climax of industrial development in the direc- 

299 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

tion of monopoly must be apparent, and it is 
so significant that one wonders why it was not 
better appreciated at the time. The free land, 
which for over two hundred and fifty years 
had served as a refuge for the discontented, was 
being cut off at the very time when industries 
were concentrating and labor was reacting 
against monopolistic tendencies. The slack- 
ening of one would inevitably allow other fac- 
tors to work with greater potency and every 
observable change may be accounted for. It 
was not accidental that immigration from 
Canada to the United States reached its cul- 
mination in 1890 and then turned the other 
way, so that before long the United States was 
"furnishing annually a larger proportion of 
the total number of emigrants into Canada 
than any other country." 

The reasons for widespread dis- 
Populists content are obvious; some sort of 

reaction or revolt was sure to fol- 
low, and looking back, with the advantage of 
nearly thirty years' perspective, it seems in- 
evitable that it should have arisen in the West. 
The immediate cause was the usual one of 
over-expansion and over-development. Short- 
age of other lands and a succession of rainy 
years had tempted settlers, especially in Kan- 
sas and Nebraska, to take up farms beyond the 
safety line of annual rainfall. When the dry 

300 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

years came, as come they must, crops failed, 
mortgages were foreclosed, and the farms were 
abandoned. It was natural that these men 
should turn for relief toward the Government 
as the power strong enough to be of use. The 
Federal Government had given the land free 
to settlers, its army had protected them, its 
grants had made the Western railroads possi- 
ble, it had given the settlers their territorial 
government and finally admitted them into the 
Union. And so the object of these discontented 
farmers was to get control of the Government or 
to force the Government to act in their behalf. 
Their organization was ready at hand in 
the Granges and Farmers' Alliance, and the 
movement spread rapidly. Starting only in 
local politics, and not earlier than 1888, a na- 
tional organization was first formed in 1891, 
and yet the People's Party polled over a mil- 
lion votes in 1892 and two years later nearly 
half a million more. The Populists demanded, 
control by the Government, and if necessary 
Government ownership, of railroads, tele- 
graphs, and telephones, the restoration to the 
Government of the excess lands granted to rail- 
roads, the abolition of the national banking 
system, the expansion of the national currency 
by the issue of fiat money and by the free and 
unlimited coinage of gold and silver in the 
ratio of 16 to i, the establishment of postal 

301 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

savings banks, a graduated income tax, and 
the election of United States senators by direct 
vote of the people. 

The Populist demands do not seem to us 
so very alarming ; at the time they were charac- 
terized as revolutionary and anarchistic, but 
the extravagance of the language in which they 
were couched was partly responsible for that. 
In the Omaha platform of 1892 it was declared 
that "We meet in the midst of a nation brought 
to the verge of moral, political and material 
ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot box, the 
Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even 
the ermine of the Bench. The people are de- 
morahzed. . . . The fruits of the toil of mil- 
lions are boldly stolen to build up colossal 
fortunes for a few. . . . From the same prolific 
womb of governmental injustice we breed the 
two great classes — tramps and millionaires." 
No wonder the conservative East was fright- 
ened and indiscriminately condemned what- 
ever sprang from the "wild-eyed Populists." 
Perhaps it is too much to ask of those who 
are participating in an economic and political 
revolution, but if the men who were in power 
had only had some appreciation of the actual 
conditions and a little sympathy for the under 
dog, it might have saved a world of trouble later. 

The first historian of the Populist move- 
ment, F. L. McVey, writing early in 1896, 

?,02 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

when the party was apparently in the full tide 
of prosperity, was inclined to criticize their 
cause and its platform, because "Every plank 
of any importance is an economic one and con- 
siders economic questions only. In fact, the 
whole movement might be designated as a pro- 
test against the present economic system." ^ 
President McVey was right, and yet the greater 
significance of the Populist uprising lay there, 
in the phenomenal growth of a party whose 
creed proclaimed its belief that it was the busi- 
ness of Government to regulate the economic 
concerns of life in the interests of the common 
people. In that doctrine, others were ready 
to join. For the farmer who, of necessity and 
yet of his own free will, worked in the fields 
from dawn to dark, it was hard to accept a 
declaration in the party platform in favor of 
an eight-hour day. For the sake of forming an 
alliance with labor, however, it was done, but 
it shows the fundamental character of the 
combination, that the Populists were a party 
of discontent. 

Unfortunately for the cause of re- 
silver form the People's Party suddenly 

and too entirely laid emphasis upon 
free silver. A grievance of the West was the 
scarcity of money; this is a universal com- 

^ Frank L. McVey, "The Populist Movement," Economic 
Studies, American Economic Association, vol. i, no. 3 (1896), 
p. 187. 

303 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

plaint, but in so far as it referred to a shortage 
of currency, to a scantiness in the medium of 
exchange, it expressed a genuine hardship and 
was characteristic of the frontier. When the 
United States was returning to a specie basis 
after the paper currency of the war, the Bland- 
AlHson Act had been passed in 1878 provid- 
ing for the purchase and coinage of from two 
to four milHon silver dollars every month. 
This was not enough to satisfy the demand and 
in connection with the passage of the McKin- 
ley Tariff Act, in 1890, the Western free silver 
men were strong enough to obtain further 
concessions, increasing the purchase to four 
and one half million ounces of silver every 
month, but not necessitating the coinage of 
this bullion. When the Panic of 1893 broke, 
President Cleveland, like many others of his 
countrymen, was so convinced that the Silver 
Purchase Act was largely responsible, that he 
forced a reluctant Congress in special session 
to repeal the objectionable act. At once a 
grievance was raised into an issue. With the 
confidence that is born of ignorance, many 
people in the country believed that the Gov- 
ernment actually did create money by fiat, 
and the free coinage of silver became an ob- 
session. "A fanaticism like that of the Cru- 
sades" spread through the West and became the 
feature of the presidential campaign of 1896. 

304 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

One is apt to think of Mr. William J. Bryan, 
in the campaign of 1896, principally in con- 
nection with the closing sentences of his speech 
before the Democratic convention which se- 
cured him the nomination of that party: "We 
shall answer their demands for a gold stand- 
ard by saying to them, you shall not press 
down upon the brow of labor this crown of 
thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon 
a cross of gold." And the New York World ex- 
pressed its disgust editorially: "Lunacy hav- 
ing dictated the platform it was perhaps 
natural that hysteria should evolve the can- 
didate." In reality it is much nearer the truth 
to regard Mr. Bryan as being in hearty sym- 
pathy with his section of the country and, at 
thirty-six years of age, as giving expression to 
its needs with a whole-souled enthusiasm that 
made him the leader of all the discontented 
elements, as well as of the Dem.ocratic Party. 
It seems incredible now that a reputable New 
York paper could say : — 

Its nominal head was worthy of the cause. Nom- 
inal, because the wretched, rattle-pated bey, posing 
in vapid vanity and mouthing resounding rotten- 
ness, was not the real leader of that league of hell. 
He was only a puppet in the blood-imbued hands of 
Altgeld, the anarchist, and Debs, the revolutionist, 
and other desperados of that stripe.^ 

^ New York Tribune, editorial of November 6, 1896. 
305 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

The language is extravagant even for an 
opponent in the excitement of a poUtical cam- 
paign, but it must be remembered that to the 
conservative Eastern business man it seemed 
as if the Democratic platform and candidate 
were intended to undermine the very founda- 
tions of American prosperity. In that light 
the election of 1896 must be regarded. It was 
a combination of the big business interests of 
the country, under the leadership of Marcus 
A. Hanna, against a reform movement which 
seemed so radical as to be revolutionary and 
dangerous. William McKinley was chosen by 
Mark Hanna and the Republican Party as their 
nominee, and in the ensuing election he was 
successful, primarily because the immediate 
issue which the Democrats had raised was 
recognized as fallacious, and locally many 
votes were affected by a great rise in the price 
of wheat. Underneath was the larger reason 
that the country, generally prosperous, was 
not yet ready for the ideas of reform which 
were being advocated. 

Nearly twenty years later, the New York 
Nation could write of Mr. Bryan and the free 
silver movement: "It may be argued, with 
considerable plausibility, that he builded bet- 
ter than he knew. Capitalistic interests really 
were guilty of great abuses, and Mr. Bryan, 
it may be argued, though wrong in the partic- 

306 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

ular matter that he took hold of, stirred up a 
sentiment which, however ignorant, was right- 
eous." If that be the case, as is now generally 
recognized, the election of 1896 would have 
been a temporary check only and not a defeat. 
The war with Spain, in 1898, diverted the 
attention of the people for a time, but no 
sooner was the war and its attendant questions 
settled than the spirit of discontent reasserted 
itself. In the meantime events had occurred 
which put an entirely different face on the 
situation. Large crops in the United States 
and a shortage in the world's markets carried 
the price of wheat to unprecedented figures. 
The discovery of gold in the Klondike and the 
development of African mines changed the 
silver question to one of gold and the com- 
plaint of low prices to a wail over the high cost 
of living. 

The culmination was reached in the 
Finance ^^^ ^^ "High Finance." The dec- 
ade from 1887 to 1897 forms the 
period of the "trust in the strict legal sense," 
when large-scale production brought its fore- 
ordained results in further consolidation for 
the sake of the economies and advantages ac- 
cruing from combination. The financial basis 
of the trust was the issuance of preferred stock 
or bonds representing the value of the constit- 
uent concerns, and of common stock capital- 

307 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

izing the real or supposed profits resultin'g 
from elimination of competition. The pros- 
perity of 1897 and 1898 not only had brought 
money to the public which it was eager to 
invest, but also had given unlimited confi- 
dence. There seemed to be no end, for "the 
profits of manufacture, notably in the steel 
and iron trades, went on increasing faster than 
promoters could turn their expectations into 
stock." 

The growth of the steel industry has a ro- 
m.ance of its own that reads like a tale of the 
Arabian Nights, but even that enterprise 
seemed to have overreached itself when J. 
Pierpont Morgan, the Wall Street leader in 
consolidation, formed the "billion-dollar steel 
trust" in March of 1901. Yet the rage for in- 
vestment only grew into a mania, and April, 
1 90 1, was unparalleled in the history of the 
United States. 

Not only did the younger men who had sold out 
to the Steel Corporation, now made into many 
times millionaires almost overnight and bewildered 
by their extraordinary fortune, toss into stock mar- 
ket ventures the money which they saw no other 
way of using, but old and experienced capitalists 
lost their heads, asserted publicly that the old tradi- 
tions of finance no longer held and that a new order 
of things must now be reckoned with, and joined 
the dance. The "outside public," meantime, 
seemed to lose all restraint. A stream of excited 
customers, of every description, brought their 

308 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

money down to Wall Street, and spent their days in 
offices near the Stock Exchange. . . . The news- 
papers were full of stories of hotel waiters, clerks in 
business offices, even door-keepers and dressmakers, 
who had won considerable fortunes in their specu- 
lations.^ 

That the collapse of the bubble was not 
accompanied with more serious consequences 
is perhaps due to the fact that the Northern 
Pacific "comer" of May, 1901, frightened 
without badly hurting the general public, and 
that with the culmination in the "rich man's 
panic" of 1903, or even in that of 1907, the real 
bases of American prosperity were untouched. 

These were the days of suddenly changing 
standards, of a great increase in the wealthy 
class and of a greater increase of individual for- 
tunes, when the time of the millionaire passed 
and that of the multi-millionaire began. Ex- 
penditure rose on the same scale and was un- 
rivaled in the experience of the United States. 
But it was reassuring to observe the old Ameri- 
can spirit reasserting itself. Wealth that was 
so easily acquired lost something of its value 
and it was sought less and less for its own sake 
and more for what it represented and for its 
power. American generosity outdid itself. The 
world stood aghast at the lavish way with 
which money was spent, but it could not do 
otherwise than admire the stupendous phil- 
' ^ A. D. Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance, pp. 300-301. 
309 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

anthropies which corresponded to the growth 
of fortunes, where one million was acceptable, 
but many millions were required to attract 
attention. 

Concentration of industry was followed by 
the concentration of wealth; syndicates, inter- 
locking directorates, and combinations in 
financial groups were the order of the day; one 
reads of the "Morgan interests" or of the 
"Standard Oil group." When one realizes the 
enormous power attaching to such accumula- 
tions of wealth and thinks of the insidious alli- 
ance that had grown up between business and 
politics, it will be seen that there was danger 
of, if there did not actually exist, a plutocracy,^ 
and this was the situation with which the re- 
awakened reform movement found itself con- 
fronted when the issues of the Spanish War 
became a thing of the past. 

In a discussion several years ago 
new era among men who were prominent 

in their respective fields of business, 

* "This was not all of it brought about by direct corrup- 
tion, but much was effected through more insidious influence, 
and by furnishing the funds that political exigencies in impor- 
tant electoral contests called for. The time was, and we all 
know it, when in many of the directorates of the great cor- 
porations of the country, orders for the delivery of delegates 
in a convention and of members of the legislature for pur- 
poses of corporate control were issued with the same feeling of 
confidence in their fulfillment as an order for the purchase of 
machinery or the enlargement of the pay-roll." W. H. Taft, 
"The Signs of the Times," address before Electrical Manu- 
facturers' Club, November 6, 1913, pp. 11-12. 

310 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

politics, and professional life, the consensus 
of opinion showed itself to be that the out- 
standing features of American history since the 
Civil War were the concentration of industry 
and of wealth and the influence of business 
in politics. They were in the very midst of the 
reaction against these conditions and though 
keenly interested they were unable to define 
it or even to describe what was taking place. 
As we look back now it seems as if again an 
accident of history had largely affected the 
course of events. The assassination of Mc- 
Kinley at the beginning of his second term in 
1901 placed in the presidential chair a man 
who was more quickly responsive to popular 
feeling, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. If McKinley 
was, as he has been called, a political ther- 
mometer, Mr. Roosevelt was a political ba- 
rometer, but he was more than that, as he 
helped to create the storms he foretold. 

In the light of subsequent events it is amus- 
ing to read the new President's apparently 
sincere declaration that he would "continue 
absolutely unbroken the policy" of his prede- 
cessor. A strong believer in party organiza- 
tion he was evidently trying to keep the 
Republican machine in running order, and yet 
he was irresistibly diverted into becoming the 
leader of the reformers. In the presidential 
campaign of 1900 Mr. Bryan had thrust for- 

311 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

ward the question of imperialism, or the ac- 
quisition of the Philippines, and on that issue 
had been defeated. Two years later the Presi- 
dent made a tour of New England and it was 
noted in the Annual Register that his speeches 
on imperialism aroused no interest whatever, 
but when he spoke on the tariff and the trusts 
the response was instantaneous. The question 
of the day could not be avoided and would 
not be evaded. 

There is nothing to be gained by attacking 
or defending Mr. Roosevelt's course, and little 
except interest to be derived as yet from any 
attempt to describe his aggressive personality; 
the historian of the future must attend to that. 
But what he did cannot be passed by. In a 
qlever sketch, which is a penetrating charac- 
ter study as well, the editor of the Atlantic 
Monthly, Mr. EUery Sedgwick, framed an 
excellent introduction by saying: "Mr. Roose- 
velt was fortunate in the times in which he 
lived " ; and the first point the writer emphasized 
was that "For seven years he preached as no 
revivalist ever preached on this continent. . . . 
From Wall Street to the ranges of the West 
his sermons were heard not one but seven days 
a week. Men listened and believed." ^ What- 
ever his motives, whatever his characteristics, 
Mr. Roosevelt became the mouthpiece of the 
^ Atlantic Monthly, May, 1912. 

312 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

second generation, the exponent of its ideas, 
and the leader of its reforms. 

The rapidity with which things happened, 
when combined with the instinct of the Presi- 
dent for the dramatic, made the newspapers 
interesting to the reader of the day, but be- 
wildering to the later student unless he holds 
fast to the main purpose of it all, and that was 
to break the hold of privilege and to weaken 
the power of wealth. The Interstate Commerce 
Commission had been established in 1887 at 
the time of the great awakening; its functions 
had been restricted by the courts largely to 
investigation; it had accomplished something 
in the way of publicity, and now, at Roose- 
velt's instigation, power was given "to deter- 
mine and prescribe what will be the just and 
reasonable rates" for railroads. The Sherman 
Anti-Trust Law had been enacted in 1890 in 
response to the early excitement over the form- 
ing of combinations. It had been invoked 
successfully a few times and was now deliber- 
ately chosen as the instrument for attacking 
corpor'ations that "were working to the pub- 
lic injury." Though only one of many, the 
most important of these cases resulted in the 
dissolution of the Northern Securities Com- 
pany which had attempted a merger of the 
Northern Pacific and the Great Northern 
Railways. But the President was among the 

313 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

first to discriminate between good trusts and 
bad trusts, and in other cases as well furthered 
a policy that was not destructive, but con- 
structive, and led upward to the "new na- 
tionalism" which demanded that the Gov- 
ernment should meet the needs of the time 
and should take an active part in solving the 
new problems. This was admirably illustrated 
in the matter of conservation. The Newlands 
Act in 1902, for the reclamation of arid lands, 
and the forest reserve policy, having encoun- 
tered opposition from private and corporate 
interests, pointed to the necessity of a more 
comprehensive plan for the conservation of 
the natural resources of the United States. 
This was well presented and so ably advo- 
cated, notably by Mr. Gifford Pinchot, that 
it has been an integral feature of American 
national policy, though not to the extent its 
supporters urged. The improvement of social 
conditions was still regarded as a matter rather 
for the individual states to handle. 

The popularity of the President's course was 
attested in the election of 1904 when he won 
"the most sweeping victory in the history of 
American politics." Mr. Roosevelt accom- 
plished much but, especially with a reluctant 
and even hostile Congress, he could not accom- 
plish everything. Reforms were started, but 
were not completed ; and one of his greatest 

314 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

services was the hope of better things he 
inspired. It was perhaps inevitable, after the 
turbulence of his seven years of office, that his 
successor, Mr. WiUiam Howard Taft, should 
suffer from the reaction just as Van Buren 
was punished for succeeding Jackson. Mr. Taft 
was a reformer, too, but he was not radical, 
and when it came to him to lead he allied 
with himself the conservative elements or 
the group that was called reactionary. With 
its assistance he did accomplish much in the 
way of advanced legislation, but not enough 
to satisfy the impatience of those who had 
now tasted of progress. "That leviathan, the 
people," to use one of Mr. Taft's favorite ex- 
pressions, once aroused, started out on its in- 
dependent career, blindly and blunderingly, 
but with unmistakable strength and power. 
In other words, the popular movement became 
the leading feature of the time and the part 
the individual played became subordinate. 
In childlike faith that laws were the one thing 
needful, direct legislation became the panacea 
and in the form of the initiative and referen- 
dum was introduced in many states. In order 
to strike at the heart of the poUtical machine, 
or at least at the chiefs of the party organiza- 
tion, the popular election of United States 
senators was demanded. To accomplish this 
and to strike a blow at wealth by legalizing 

315 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

an income tax, the hitherto impossible was 
achieved in adopting two amendments to the 
Constitution. And to make assurance doubly 
sure nominations for office in many of the 
states were ordered to be reached through 
direct primaries. 

There is a tradition of democracy in the 
United States which goes back to the real or 
imagined situation of nearly a hundred years 
ago. Absorbed in work, the people allowed an 
unhealthy state of affairs to develop, but al- 
ways dreamed of reestablishing former condi- 
tions, whenever they wished to do so. The 
time had come, but to their surprise the peo- 
ple found their will thwarted at almost every 
turn. In their anger they turned against any 
one and everything that opposed them. The 
judiciary is the most conservative of insti- 
tutions and has served as a check on hasty 
popular impulse. The way in which it was re- 
sorted to by corporations under the Fourteenth 
Amendment has already been referred to, as 
well as to the resentment that was caused 
thereby. And now the people demanded a 
change. The form is immaterial; the popular 
election and recall of judges, and the so-called 
recall of judicial decisions, alike indicate an 
effort to force the judiciary to respond more 
quickly to public opinion. Yet the service 
which the conservative courts rendered was 

316 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

not slight. If no other, it gave time to bring 
a growing realization that the old democracy 
could never be restored. 

The impatience of the reformers under a 
conservative policy led to an "insurgent" 
Republican opposition in Congress, which in 
cooperation with the Democrats succeeded in 
1 910 in breaking the power of the Speaker, 
but, be it said, without increasing the effi- 
ciency of the House. The movement was sup- 
ported by the more ardent of the Roosevelt 
faction and finally by Mr. Roosevelt himself. 
The conservative elements of the party were 
still in control of the machine and in the con- 
vention of 1912 prevented the nomination 
of Mr. Roosevelt and secured the renomina- 
tion of Mr. Taft. Mr. Roosevelt and his sup- 
porters thereupon broke away and formed 
the new Progressive Party, embodying the 
spirit of progress which has been described as 
animating the second generation, and com- 
prising a medley of reformers and discontented 
elements. The spHt in the Republican Party 
was probably responsible for the election of 
the Democratic candidate. Governor Woodrow 
Wilson, but although the country was desirous 
of progressive measures, it seems to have been 
tired of being preached at and welcomed the 
chance of a quiet administration. The Pro- 
gressive Party met the fate of all third-party 

317 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

movements since the Civil War, for its real 
mission was accomplished by its show of 
strength in forcing the older parties to accept 
and carry out its reforms. There is truth in 
the saying that the great service of the Pro- 
gressive Party was in making "socialistic 
ideas" respectable. 

Just before his election as Governor of New 
Jersey in 1910, Mr. Wilson is reported to have 
said that "I understand the principles of the 
campaign to mean this, that if I am elected 
Governor I shall have been elected leader of 
my party." It was primarily as leader of the 
Democratic Party that he acted in his first 
administration as President of the United 
States, which will probably long remain with 
an unequaled record of legislative achieve- 
ment, and for this the greatest credit must be 
given to Mr. Wilson himself. Merely to men- 
tion a substantial reduction in tariff rates, a 
revision of the banking and currency system, 
the strengthening of the Interstate Commerce 
Commission, bolstering up the anti-trust acts, 
and creating a Federal Trade Commission, 
would be sufficient to indicate accomplish- 
ment, but not to reveal the character of what 
was taking place. These and other acts meant 
a strengthening of federal authority at the 
expense of local governments, contrary to 
Jeffersonian theories of democracy. But in the 

318 



THE SECOND GENERATION 

face of the exigencies of fact Mr. Wilson has 
been as disregard ful of theory and of his own 
preconceived doctrines as was Jefferson him- 
self when he became President. The industrial 
democracy of to-day must rest upon another 
basis than the landed democracy of earlier 
times. It is too soon to pass judgment upon 
the merits of what was done or to analyze the 
results of the election of 191 6, but it seems, 
even with the dissatisfaction which his first 
term aroused, as if, in the opinion of the peo- 
ple, Mr. Wilson had accomplished more in 
the direction of positive reform than was likely 
under a conservative Republican leadership. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Two books will be found especially helpful for the subjects 
of this chapter: H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 
1885-1905 (1907), and F. A. Ogg, National Progress (1918). 
Biographies and autobiographies are indispensable. The best 
are Herbert Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna (1912), C. Lloyd, 
Henry Demarest Lloyd (2 vols., 191 2), Theodore Roosevelt, an 
Autobiography (1913), R. M. LaFollette, A Personal Narrative 
of Political Experiences (1913), S. W. McCall, Life of Thomas 
B. Reed (1914), and W. R. Thayer, Life and Letters of John 
Hay (2 vols., 1915). 

Among the works on special subjects to be recommended 
are I. M. Tarbell, The Tariff in Our Times (191 1), C. R. Van 
Hise, Conservation of Natural Resources of the United States 
(1910), Alexander D. Noyes, Forty Years of American Finance 
(1898, with subsequent editions), Brooks Adams, The Theory 
of Social Revolutions (1913), A. T. Hadley, Undercurrents in 
American Politics (1915), and F. L. Paxson, " The Rise of 
Sport" in Mississippi Valley Historical Review (19 17). 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE UNITED STATES AS A WORLD POWER 

In Spite of the recognition grudgingly ac- 
corded the proclamation of the Monroe Doc- 
trine early in the nineteenth century, the 
United States did not become a power in world 
affairs outside of the American continents, al- 
though the country's growth to economic in- 
dependence and then to industrial importance 
was necessarily accompanied by some show of 
consideration from others. The outcome of the 
Civil War, however, raised the Federal Gov- 
ernment in general estimation and events 
immediately subsequent still further increased 
the world's respect. 

<pjjg Napoleon III had thought that he 

French saw an opportunity to regain for 
^ . France a foothold upon the west- 

ern contment and took advantage 
of America's absorption in the war to inter- 
vene in Mexico, where, in 1863, he e&tablished 
the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as em- 
peror. The venture was not proving success- 
ful, as it could be maintained only with troops 
and money, which France could ill afford, es- 
pecially in view of Germany's aggressiveness. 
The American Secretary of State, William H. 

320 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

Seward, was an able diplomat and simply 
awaited his opportunity. At the right moment 
he insisted upon the withdrawal of the French 
troops and, in 1866, Napoleon yielded, greatly 
to the credit of the United States and of Ameri- 
can diplomacy. 

.. , Again during the Civil War there 

had been considerable probability 
of foreign intervention, or at least of a demon- 
stration against the Northern blockade of the 
Southern ports. Rumor has it that the United 
States sought out some power to come to the 
support of the Federal Government, that the 
Russian navy appeared in American waters 
at a critical time, and that the payment of five 
million dollars for this service was covered in 
the purchase of Alaska for $7,500,000 in 1867. 
Whatever may be the truth or lack of truth in 
this story — and the charge would seem to be 
excessive for the old hulks that the Russians 
are said to have sent — there is every reason 
for considering the taking of Alaska off Rus- 
sia's hands as a friendly act. The purchase 
was commonly referred to as "Seward's Folly," 
and it is entertaining, especially in view of 
subsequent developments, to read that some 
tried to find justification by claiming that 
Americans were thwarting the plans of the 
British, and that, anyway, Alaska would sim- 
ply round off the northern continental pos- 

321 



'DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

sessions, as of course eventually Canada would 
become a part of the United States. 

. There was also obtained at this 
ation " ^^"^^ ^ solution of the old and per- 
plexing problem of naturalization, 
which had been left unsettled by the War of 
1 812. The increase of immigration to the 
United States after 1840 repeatedly brought 
up the practical question of whether any per- 
son had the right to renounce allegiance to one 
country and become the citizen or subject of 
another, and as the largest numbers of immi- 
grants were coming from Ireland and the Ger- 
man states, difficulties arose most frequently 
in connection with those countries. Shortly 
before the war, a naturalized citizen of the 
United States, returning to his birthplace in 
Hanover, was arrested and forced into the 
army, and though, upon strong American 
representations, the Hanoverian Government 
stated that "a full pardon had been granted" 
and that the man in question "had been dis- 
missed from the military service," this was not 
a recognition of the principle contended for. 
The trouble with the British reached its cli- 
max just after the war through the Fenian 
agitations and the arrest of naturalized Ameri- 
can citizens who were natives of Ireland. Anti- 
British sentiments being strongly in the ascend- 
ant in the United States, stirring resolutions 

322 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

were passed by both political parties and a 
federal statute of July, 1868, formally de- 
clared that "expatriation is a natural and in- 
herent right of all people, indispensable to the 
enjoyment of the rights of life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." This was only a bit 
of political buncombe, as several months be- 
fore the United States Minister to Prussia, 
George Bancroft, had concluded a naturaliza- 
tion treaty with the North German Union, 
followed soon after by treaties with South 
German states, and there was every reason to 
expect in the immediate future similar trea- 
ties would be made with other powers, includ- 
ing Great Britain. Still it did not lessen the 
achievement of having obtained general ac- 
ceptance of the principles for which the United 
States had contended usually against the rest 
of the world. 

But the greatest increase of Ameri- 
AM) a ^^^ prestige resulted from the 
Claims Treaty of Washington, in 1871, 

which was of itself a noteworthy 
event in international relations, as Great Brit- 
ain and the United States referred all of the 
main questions at issue between them to 
peaceful arbitration and judicial settlement. 
Other matters were important and yet were 
insignificant in comparison with the award 
of the Geneva Tribunal. Constituted to con- 

323 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

sider the particular question, it granted dam- 
ages of $15,000,000 to the United States for 
Great Britain's relaxation of neutrality in 
allowing the Alabama and other ships to sail 
from British ports and prey upon federal com- 
merce. The damages may have been exces- 
sive; they were so regarded by Englishmen at 
the time, though promptly paid, and when the 
Americans came to divide the amount among 
the direct claimants, a balance was left over, a 
part of which was distributed among the in- 
surance companies whose claims had been 
thrown out by the Geneva Tribunal ; but this 
in no way detracted from the importance of 
the position to which the United States had 
attained. 

All of these occurrences brought 
^^®?" increased respect for the power of 
plomacy ^^^ United States, and yet Ameri- 
cans in general kept aloof from the 
affairs of the world and so remained peculiarly 
backward in their interest in international 
matters and in their concern for foreign rela- 
tions. Occasional Presidents might have effi- 
cient Secretaries of State, but the mass of the 
people regarded diplomacy as an adjunct of 
monarchy and diplomatic usages as unworthy 
of observance. The attitude of the people was 
fairly represented by Congress, which refused 
to make adequate grants to American repre- 

324 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

sentatives at foreign courts, and if they main- 
tained among their fellow diplomats positions 
worthy of their status, they did so at their own 
expense. It was not until 1893 that Congress 
finally gave its consent to appointments of the 
grade of ambassador, and even then it was 
smuggled into a clause in an appropriation 
act, permitting the President to reciprocate 
when another power sent an ambassador to 
the United States. De Tocqueville pointed 
out that equality was the ultimate basis of 
good manners, and so it was with American 
diplomacy, which had sunk to a low ebb. The 
disregard of formal observances was largely 
due to the ignorance of provincialism and to 
lack of experience, but in the long run Ameri- 
can principles of open dealing, fair play, and 
consideration for others were bound to im- 
prove diplomatic intercourse. Until this was 
achieved, and it required time, it is not un- 
natural that foreign governments should have 
looked down upon American diplomacy, and 
that Washington should have been regarded 
neither as an important nor as an attractive 
diplomatic post. 

Vene- It was, therefore, a surprise to the 

zuela, world and a shock to the British 

^^95 when in 1895 the United States 

suddenly demanded, in accordance with the 
Monroe Doctrine, that a boundary dispute, 

325 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

of which most people had never heard, be- 
tween Great Britain and Venezuela, should 
be settled by arbitration. It hardly seemed 
as if that doctrine applied in this case, and 
Lord Salisbury, the British Foreign and Prime 
Minister, said as much in declining to arbi- 
trate. He failed to appreciate how the Ameri- 
can people cherish the Monroe Doctrine. Deep 
in their hearts it lies as an expression of Amer- 
icanism, defensive at the time it was uttered, 
in that European systems would have been 
dangerous to the peace and safety of the 
United States, and later idealized because it 
was also altruistic, an older and stronger 
nation protecting the interests of younger and 
weaker states. And one of the best things 
about the Monroe Doctrine, from the stand- 
point of the United States, is its indefinite- 
ness or its elasticity, which makes it appli- 
cable to any situation. 

On receiving the British reply. President 
Cleveland recommended to Congress, in a 
special message, the appointment of a com- 
mission to determine for itself the true bound- 
ary line in dispute. When Congress passed 
a bill appropriating a hundred thousand dol- 
lars for this commission, without a single dis- 
senting vote in either house, and was sup- 
ported by public opinion throughout the 
United States, and when all England stood 

326 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

aghast at the prospect of war, Lord Salisbury 
saw his mistake and tactfully permitted the 
American commission to have the benefit of 
British Information with access to British 
official records. Before this commission could 
make Its report, arbitration was agreed to and 
a board appointed, whose decision was ac- 
cepted by all parties. The language which the 
American Government had used was not the 
ordinary language of diplomacy, but there was 
no mistaking its meaning. Great Britain had 
yielded on the principle Involved, and the 
American people were proud of their President 
and proud of themselves, while to their aston- 
ishment they found themselves on better 
terms with the British than ever before, be- 
cause the result of the Incident was an in- 
creased mutual respect. 

On the other hand, in spite of good inten- 
tions the action of the United States was not 
popular In South America, partly because the 
North American and the Southern Latin 
types fail to understand each other, but largely 
because of the misconception by Richard 
Olney, the Secretary of State, of the condi- 
tions and relations between the states of 
North and South America. According to Pro- 
fessor Fish, more errors could hardly have 
been compressed into fewer words than in 
Olney 's remark that "the states of America, 

327 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

South as well as North, by geographical prox- 
imity, by natural sympathy, by similarity of 
governmental institutions, are friends and 
allies, commiercially and politically, of the 
United States." ^ Nor was the strain of the 
situation relieved by his further statement 
that "To-day the United States is practically 
sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is law 
upon the subjects to which it confines its inter- 
position." 

In 1898 the United States went 

.f!f to war with Spain over conditions 

with . ^ 1 r 1 

Spain ^^ Cuba lor reasons that were 

** partly commercial, partly hys- 
terical, and partly humanitarian." It was 
only a four-months war and the losses in action 
were numbered by tens of officers and hun- 
dreds of men, though reliance upon a volun- 
teer system brought the usual heavy toll, 
which unpreparedness of the army entails, in 
that the deaths from typhoid fever alone were 
several times greater than those in battle. 
The war with Spain may have been insignifi- 
cant in its fighting, but it was impressive in 
its consequences. The best traditions of the 
navy were maintained and their glory strength- 
ened. There were the usual war accompani- 
ments of enthusiasm and patriotism as great 
as the size of the contest warranted, but of no 

* American Diplomacy, p. 395. 
3^8 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

greater significance than the disappearance 
of a former sectionalism. This was illustrated 
in the story told of the ex- Confederate of- 
ficer who now volunteered to fight under 
the United States flag, but forgot himself In 
the excitement of the charge and called 
to his men, "Come on! Kill the damned 
Yanks!" 

But the greatest importance attaches to 
the position attained by the United States 
and the recognition accorded by othe;r powers. 
There is some question as to the exact service 
and by whom rendered, when an attempt was 
made before the outbreak of hostilities to 
isolate the United States diplomatically, but 
there is no doubt that the attempt was thwarted 
and there is also no doubt of the marked 
friendliness of the British Government. John 
Hay, the American Ambassador, wrote home 
from London: "If we wanted it ... we could 
have the practical assistance of the British 
navy — on the do ut des principle, naturally." 
When this was not made use of, the British 
strained the bonds of International usage to 
extend courtesies to the Americans that were 
of very practical assistance. Though no offi- 
cial recognition could be taken of this service, 
it remained among the traditions of the Re- 
publican Party, and was doubtless partly re- 
sponsible for the hurt feeling of the British, 

329 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

at the outbreak of the Great War, when the 
Americans did not show any disposition to 
return the "courtesies" which had been ex- 
tended to them years before. 

Americans have no reason to be ashamed 
of their intervention in Cuba, in spite of Euro- 
pean skepticism, for there seems to have been 
no thought of annexation and only a jealous 
fear lest the young republic should not justify 
American confidence. There were acquisitions 
of territory, however, as a result of the war 
that were more or less unexpected. The in- 
corporation of the Hawaiian Islands in the 
United States was a foregone conclusion, and, 
though it had not been previously possible to 
get a President and two-thirds of the Senate 
in accord as to a treaty, the exigencies of war 
brought a joint resolution for annexation, 
which was just as effective and required only 
a majority vote. Porto Rico and the Philip- 
pines were spoils of war. "Mr. Dooley" said 
rightly of his countrymen that when they first 
heard of the Philippines they thought it was 
a breakfast food. But while negotiations for 
f peace were under way President McKinley 
' made a tour of the South and West and to his 
surprise found the sentiment of those sections 
strongly in favor of annexation. He accord- 
ingly instructed the commissioners in Paris to 
insist upon the retention of these islands and 

330. 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

an indemnity therefor of twenty million dol- 
lars was granted. It marked the beginning 
of a new epoch in the foreign relations of the 
United States, for it meant the recognition by 
the American people themselves, as well as 
by the rest of the world, that their country 
had risen to be a world power in the accepted 
use of that expression. 

An interesting feature of the new develop- 
ment was that Americans had apparently de- 
parted from their original and cherished co- 
lonial system by acquiring territory which was 
not to be incorporated, on a footing of equal- 
ity, into the Union of states. In fact the idea 
of incorporation was so fixed in the minds of 
Americans that many actually questioned the 
constitutional right to acquire territory which 
was not to become a state. They overlooked 
the precedent of Alaska, and they failed to 
see that their position was exactly the reverse 
of what it had been at the time of the Louisiana 
Purchase in 1803, when the promise of incor- 
poration was declared not merely unwise but 
illegal. 

In spite of themselves the Amer- 
Far East icans had already been drawn out- 
side of the American continents 
and sooner or later they would have been 
forced into taking their rightful place in the 
affairs of the world. The United States had 

331 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES' ^ 

been responsible for the opening of Japan to 
foreign commerce, and had cooperated with 
European powers in several instances in Paci- 
fic Ocean affairs, notably in the settlement of 
the Samoan question in 1889. By virtue of 
their commercial and industrial activities the 
Americans were rising to a position of world 
importance, and it was an accident of history 
that they assumed that place through the 
Spanish War. Their growing interest in trade 
and their missionary work in the Far East 
would have made them want to share in the 
intervention in China at the time of the Boxer 
troubles in 1900, and the fact that they were 
already in the Philippines simply made it 
possible for them to act with greater effec- 
tiveness. 

We have no choice, we people of the United 
States, as to whether or not we shall play a great 
part in the world. That has been determined for 
us by fate, by the march of events. We have to 
play that part. All that we can decide is whether 
we shall play it well or ill. 

President Roosevelt's words were prophetic 
as well as retrospective, especially in reference 
to American relations with the Orient. The 
treatment accorded to the Chinese and Japa- 
nese in California and other Pacific Coast 
States, culminating in an exclusion policy, 
might leave something to be desired, but is un- 

332 



^ THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

derstandable when we remember that "com- 
petition between races is a competition in 
standards of living," and Americans may well 
take pride in many things their Government 
has done in the Far East. In 1864 the United 
States hired a Dutch vessel that it might share 
with Great Britain, France, and Holland in 
the bombardment to punish Japan for closing 
the straits of Shimonoseki, and it received a 
fourth of the indemnity, only to have Con- 
gress, twenty years later, restore its share to 
Japan. When war broke out between China 
and Japan in 1894 each belligerent gave its 
interests in the other country into the care of 
the United States. After the Boxer troubles 
in China John Hay, then Secretary of State, 
successfully carried through the recognition 
of the "open door" policy which was repre- 
sentative of the new diplomacy of the United 
States and probably prevented the dismem- 
berment of China. Although the compensa- 
tion of $24,000,000, obtained for damages sus- 
tained in the rebellion, seemed moderate in 
comparison with the demands of some of the 
other powers, the United States retained only 
the amount necessary to meet the actual 
losses suffered and returned the balance of 
$14,000,000 to China, in 1907. It was the re- 
finement of courtesy that permitted China to 
show its appreciation by dedicating this fund 

333 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

to the education of Chinese students in the 
United States. 

Roose- President Roosevelt's administra- 
velt in tion set a new record for Ameri- 

foreign ca's participation in foreign affairs, 
re a ions gome diplomats regarding him as 
a genius in his instinct for comprehending a 
situation and for acting as circumstances de- 
manded. Other nations could understand, as 
many Americans could not, his method of 
bringing the Germans to arbitrate the Vene- 
zuelan matter in 1902 by an intimation of force. 
The acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in 
1903 was a high-handed action, of which many 
have not been able to approve; but the story 
of the revolution fostered by M. Bunau-Var- 
illa from a fashionable hotel in New York 
City reads like opera bouffe, and when all the 
circumstances are taken into account it is 
hard to condemn what was done, especially 
in view of a completed Isthmian canal. The 
position which the United States and its Presi- 
dent attained is shown by their serving as the 
place of negotiation and mediator to end the 
war between Russia and Japan in 1905, by the 
part that was taken in the Algeciras Confer- 
ence of 1906, and by the growing appreciation 
of the responsibilities as well as of the privi- 
leges under the Monroe Doctrine. South and 
Central American states could not be allowed 

334 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

to shirk the consequences of their acts, and to 
prevent foreign intervention the United States 
took San Domingo under its guardianship 
until it should pay its just debts. 
„ Although the United States has 

keeping been by no means entirely exempt, 
it has been, in comparison with 
most of the other powers, remarkably free 
from war, and has been engaged in none which 
could in any way be regarded as a great con- 
test, except for its own struggle to preserve the 
Union. For over a hundred years the United 
States has remained at peace with England 
and an unfortified boundary has sufficed to 
mark the line of separation from Canada. The 
Americans have long advocated, and were 
among the earliest to use, arbitration in the 
settlement of disputes. They took a promi- 
nent part in the various peace conferences at 
The Hague; they referred the first case to the 
permanent court of arbitration at The Hague 
for trial ; and they have been one of the leading 
nations to submit their causes to peaceful 
methods of decision, for they are lovers of 
peace. In his Contributions of the United States 
to Civilization, President Eliot laid emphasis 
upon arbitration as one of these; this the late 
Senhor Nabuco, the Brazilian Ambassador 
to the United States, was not willing to accept 
unless it were taken in the sense of peace- 

335 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

keeping, when he said, "It has been one of 

your mightiest contributions to civiUzation." * 

„ . So it was that the American peo- 

Mexico . 

pie as a whole supported President 

Wilson in his determination to keep out of 
war with Mexico. While Great Britain and 
European powers evinced a willingness to 
allow the United States a free hand in its deal- 
ing with a situation of anarchy, there was a 
growing disposition to hold Americans respon- 
sible for results which might have necessi- 
tated action and precipitated important con- 
sequences, if the Great War had not broken 
out and upset all calculations. Whatever crit- 
icisms may be made of the President's course 
and apparent inconsistency, it would seem 
as if the relations of the United States with its 
Spanish American neighbors have been put 
upon a better footing and that in place of the 
Monroe Doctrine, with distrust ever attend- 
ant upon it, a more generally acceptable Pan- 
American doctrine may emerge. 
The So it was, also, that the American 

Great people supported President Wil- 

son in his efforts to keep out of 
the European struggle. Sufficient cause for 
fighting had been given over and over again, 
but everything was borne, not so much for 

' "Share of America in Civilization," American Historical 
Review, January, 1910. 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

the profits of neutrality as that the people 
longed to be allowed to remain at peace. More 
and more Americans, however, were learning 
to appreciate that the cause of the Allies was 
their own, and, when the limit of endurance 
was finally reached, Mr. Wilson found that 
his methods and policy had resulted in a more 
united people backing him than the United 
States had ever had in going to war before. 
His countrymen support him whole-heartedly 
and are proud of the way in which their Presi- 
dent has unmistakably shown their disinter- 
ested purposes and that in expressing the hopes 
of American idealism he has formulated the 
issues of peace for the world. 

In 1907 there was fear, if not actual danger, 
of war between Japan and the United States. 
As a demonstration of power, or at any rate 
as a precautionary measure, President Roose- 
velt sent the American fleet on its memorable 
voyage around the world. It was not a pleas- 
ure cruise, and for the sake of the training, if 
for no other reason, the ships sailed as though 
ready for action at any moment. European 
powers did not believe that the fleet could get 
to the Pacific, but its success settled the ques- 
tion. It may have been absurd, yet there were 
those who thought that Japan might have made 
a surprise attack, especially upon the unpro- 
tected Pacific Coast of the United States, which 

337 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

would probably have been successful, and 
they feared that the Americans would never 
rest until they had inflicted a crushing defeat 
in return. Under the circumstances it would 
have necessitated turning their resources and 
devoting their strength to one purpose until 
the whole United States had become a great 
fighting machine. And that is now happening. 
Germany drove the United States into the 
war against its will, and once in there is no 
holding back. Democracy is apt to proceed 
slowly and blunderingly; and in this instance 
the immediate achievements were disappoint- 
ing to Americans as well as to the Allies. There 
were mistakes and unwise moves, and the 
wasting of precious time, but measures were 
adopted that a few years before were un- 
dreamed of and only a few months before 
would have been impossible. 

For years many Americans were disturbed 
over the excessive immigration into the United 
States because, great as the powers of absorp- 
tion might be, it seemed as if the point of sat- 
uration had been reached. The situation was 
similar to that at the time of the Revolution. 
The outbreak of the European war caused 
serious dissensions in American public opinion 
as was natural in a people of whose blood it is 
estimated that one fifth is German. But there 
were compensating elements, such as the 

338 



THE UNITED STATES A WORLD POWER 

stopping of immigration, and when the United 
States entered the war great unifying forces 
began to work. The compulsory service law, 
with its mingling of millions of men in the 
training camps, the cooperation of the entire 
people in active support and in voluntary self- 
denial, the consciousness of the common effort 
and the sharing of the common sorrows, are 
accomplishing in a short time what ordinarily 
requires years or even generations. Racial 
and national differences are forgotten, while 
sectional prejudices are ignored and class in- 
terests are overlooked in order that a united 
people may put forth the ultimate and un- 
known strength of the whole United States. 

I Yet there is no danger of a militant nation 
resulting, for this is not inspired by love of 
fighting. It is a self-reliant people rising to 
meet an emergency, and as Americans have 
followed only their traditions and their train- 
ing, so they will return to their former ways. 
Out of the educational and industrial systems 
of the United States, college men, professional 
men, and the chief business men, as well as in- 
dividuals of wealth and leisure, offered them- 
selves for service in work of any sort and in the 
ranks if need be, but they have risen to lead- 
ership and are directing the energies of a na- 
tion. These same trained minds far-sightedly 
a^e planning a later reconstruction in which 

339 



DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNITED STATES 

warfare has no part. They are basing those 
plans upon experience, but they are making 
them with a broader outlook, with quickened 
sympathies, and with a new sense of their re- 
sponsibility especially in international affairs. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Almost all of the narrative histories treat of the subject of 
foreign relations more or less satisfactorily. Special works 
to be recommended are C. R. Fish, American Diplomacy 
(1915), J. B. Moore, American Diplomacy (1905; revised edi- 
tion, 1918), J. B. Henderson, American Diplomatic Questions 
(1901), J. H. Latane, America as a World Power, i8g'/-igo7 
(1907), A. C. Coolidge, United States as a World Power (1908), 
and F. E. Chadwick, Relations of the United States and Spain, 
lyyd-iSgS: Vol. \, Diplomacy, (1909), Vols. II and III, Span- 
ish American War (1911). 




-^^ 



^^^ 






HE UNITED 
,a section of the 




THE UNITED STATES IN RELIEF 
Reproduced from Howell's Microcosm. As it represents, a section of the globe, some parts are thrown out of proportion in the photographic repn Juction 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams, Charles Francis, on 
consolidation of railroads, 
268. 

Adams, Henry, characteriza- 
tion of Madison as Presi- 
dent, 113; on the influence 
of the church, 146. 

Adams, John, elected Presi- 
dent, 94. 

Adams, John Quincy, diary 
quoted, 140, 141; chosen 
President, 155. 

Alabama, the. Confederate 
cruiser, 227, 228. 

Alabama claims, the, 323, 324. 

Alaska, acquisition of, 321. 

Alexander, Gen. E. B., on the 
contrast between South and 
North, 250. 

Alien and Sedition Acts, 95, 
96. 

Amendments to the Constitu- 
tion, 248; how made, 73; 
the Thirteenth, 234, 239; 
the Fourteenth, 240-42 ; the 
Fifteenth, 242; astonishing 
application of the Four- 
teenth, 269-72 ; Sixteenth 
and Seventeenth, 316. 

America, discovery of, i, 2. 

American diplomacy, 321, 324, 

325. 327- 

American habit of self-govern- 
ment, 53, 54, 213. 

American humor, 162. 

American idealism, 296-98, 

337. 

American inventiveness, 163, 
164, 205, 206. 

American traits, 158, 160-64. 

Americans, a nation of immi- 
grants, 15. 



Ames, Fisher, on democracy, 

151, 152. 
Andrews, Prof. Charles M., 

on colonial trade, 25, 26. 
Arthur, Chester A., President, 

283. 
Austerlitz, Napoleon's victory 

at, 105. 
Australian ballot, the, 292. 

Badger, Senator George E., 

217, 
Balance of trade, 22, 26. 
Bancroft, George, Minister to 

Prussia, 323. 
Barbary pirates, 105. 
Biddle, Nicholas, president of 

United States Bank, 171. 
Bishop, Avard L., quoted, 284. 
Bison, extermination of, 256, 

257. 

"Black Codes, The," 233, 245. 

Bland-Allison Act, the, 304. 

Boss, the, in politics, 278, 279; 
in the Senate, 282; friend of 
the immigrant, 293. 

Boston Massacre, the, 41. 

Boston Tea Party, the, 41, 42. 

Boucher, Chauncey S., cited, 
207. 

Bryan, William Jennings, lead- 
er of all the discontented ele- 
ments (1896), 305, 306. 

Bryce, Lord, quoted, 159. 

Buchanan, James, President, 
221. 

Bunau-Varilla, M., 334. 

Burgoyne, Gen. John, sur- 
renders at Saratoga, 48. 

Business, and politics, 277-93; 
bi-partisan, 290; its represen- 
tatives in the Senate, 291. 



343 



INDEX 



Cabinet, the President's, 90, 
91. 

Cabot, John, i, 2. 

Cabral, Pedro, i. 

Calhoun, John C, 115, 154, 
214; and nullification, 168. 

California, early American in- 
terest in, 200; intention of 
United States to obtain, 
201; ceded by Mexico, 202; 
discovery of gold in, 203, 
204; gold-seekers establish 
boundaries of the state, 213; 
admitted to the Union, 214. 

Canada, relations with, 116, 
118, 119, 140; boundary not 
fortified, 123; settlement of 
boundary line, 194, 198; 
emigrants to, 300. 

Carlyle, Thomas, on Ameri- 
cans, 163. 

Carpet-baggers, 241. 

Cattle-ranching, 257, 258. 

Caucus, legislative, 153, 154, 
281, 282. 

Channing, Edward, quoted, 
12, 13. 

Chesapeake, the, fired on by 
the Leopard, no, in. 

China, American relations 
with, 332, 333. 

Church, the, influence of, in 
the colonies, 15, 16; changes 
in, 146, 147; in Connecticut, 
150. 

Cities, growth of, 173, 177. 

Civil Service Reform, 288, 289. 

Civil War, the, 223-30; why 
fought, 223; both sides ac- 
tuated byhigh motives, 224; 
the West the deciding fac- 
tor, 224, 226; reconstruc- 
tion after the war, 232-48. 

Clay, Henry, 115, 171; Speak- 
er of the House, 116; boasts 
of Kentucky militia, 118; 
Presidential candidate, 155, 
198; puts through Compro- 
mise Tariff, 169. 



Cleveland, Grover, President, 
283; forces repeal of Silver 
Purchase Act, 304; in the 
Venezuela boundary case, 
326, 327. 

Clinton, DeWitt, and the Erie 
Canal, 137. 

Collins, C. W., The Fourteenth 
Amendment and the States 
quoted, 270, 271. 

Colonies, English, in America, 
4; methods of planting, 5; 
development, 6-8; settlers, 
8, 9; incentives to, 8-10; 
indentured servants and 
slaves, 11; population of, 
12; mixture of stock, 13-15; 
form of government, 15-18; 
the church in, 15; aristoc- 
racy in, 16, 21; commercial 
enterprises, 16, 17; become 
American, 18-20; England's 
commercial policy in, 22- 
28; dependent on outside 
markets, 24; trade with 
West Indies, 25, 26; smug- 
gling, 27; rivalry with the 
French, 28-31; new policy 
of England after Seven 
Years' War, 33-35; con- 
flicts with the Crown, 35- 
42 ; declaration of independ- 
ence, 43, 44; Revolution, 
44-51; independence recog- 
nized, 49, 50. 

Colonization, of the New 
World, 1-31; commercial 
interest in, 4, 7, 16; meth- 
ods, 4, 5; development, 6-8; 
of the West after independ- 
ence, 62-65. 

Columbus, Christopher, i. 

Combe, George, on American 
deference for rank and au- 
thority, 56, 57, 148; on 
charitable activities, 189, 
190. 

Committees of correspond- 
ence, 43. 



344 



INDEX 



Commons, Prof. John R., His- 
tory of American Industrial 
Society, quoted, 210, 211, 
274. 

Compromise of 1850, the, 214, 
215, 220. 

Confederate States of Amer- 
ica, formed, 223; sentiment 
of the people, 224; failed to 
obtain foreign support, 227; 
causes of its defeat, 229, 230. 

Congress, under the Confed- 
eration, 57, 58; and West- 
ern lands, 59-63; discussion 
in Federal Convention, 70, 
71; powers of, 71; builds 
the Old National Road, 
99; quarrels with President 
Johnson, 235; passes bills 
over his veto, 237 ; impeaches 
him, 238; treatment of the 
South, 239, 241. 

Conkling, Roscoe, on the Four- 
teenth Amendment, 269. 

Connecticut, old and new in, 

149-51-. 

Conservation of natural re- 
sources, 314. 

Constitution of the United 
States, origin of, 70-73 ; suc- 
cess of, 74, 75; and property 
rights, 75; interpretation of, 
89, 96; strict construction, 
89, 90, 103, 139. See also 
Amendments. 

Constitutions, State, 53-56; 
at first, not submitted to the 
voters, 54; printed by Con- 
gress, 55; government under 
them differed little from 
colonial regime, 55, 56; in- 
creasingly democratic, 149- 

51 •. 

Continental Congress, 43. 

Conway, Gen. Henry Sey- 
mour, motion in House of 
Commons, 48. 

Cornwallis, Charles, Lord, sur- 
renders at Yorktown, 48. 



Corporations, 265-67; under 
the Fourteenth Amendment, 
269-71; in politics, 290. 

Corruption in politics, 282- 
86, 290, 292. 

Corwin, Prof. Edward S., on 
"due process of law," 271, 
272. 

Cotton, trade importance of, 
86; is King, 227. 

Cotton gin, invented, 127, 130. 

Cotton growing, increase of, 
130, 192. 

Courts, nullification of laws 
by, 271, 272. 

Cowboy, a synonym for the 
West, 258. 

Crawford, William H., Pres- 
idential candidate, 155. 

Crevecoeur, Hector St. John 
de, on racial admixture in 
the colonies, 13. 

Cuba, intervention in, 330. 

Davis, John, quoted, 92, 93. 

Dawes Act, the (1887), 298. 

Declaration of Independence, 
^y, fundamental principle 
of, 44. 

Democracy, progress of, in 
United States, 56, 146-64; 
causes, 149, 150; an estab- 
lished fact, 151; influence 
of Andrew Jackson, 154- 
57; influence of the West, 
159. 

Democratic party, the, 156, 
198, 283; divided, 222; in 
election of 1876, 243; in 
election of 1896, 306; under 
lead of President Wilson, 
317.318- 

Democratic- Republican party, 
origin of, 90; first public 
service, 91; pro-French, 
92; founds newspapers, 95; 
elects Thomas Jefferson 
President, 96; forced to 
adopt opponents' doctrines 



345 



INDEX 



and ways, 98, 152; elects 
James Madison President, 

DeTocqueville, Alexis, quoted, 
163. 

Dickens, Charles, caustic com- 
ments on American people, 
181. 

Direct legislation, 315. 

Douglas, Stephen Arnold, a 
great believer in railways, 
215; agrees to repeal of Mis- 
souri Compromise, 216. 

Dred Scott case, 220. 

"Due process of law," 272. 

East India Company, 41. 
Education, spread of, 187, 188; 

the American system, 297. 
Edwards, Pierrepont, 150. 
Electoral college, similarity to 

Papal College, 72. 
Electoral Commission, the 

(1876), 243. 
Elliott, Howard, 173. 
Emancipation Proclamation, 

the, 228, 229. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 

quoted, 159. 
England. See Great Britain. 
Episcopate, American, move- 
ment to establish, 39. 
Era of Good Feeling, the, 153. 
Erie Canal, the, built, 137; 

a financial success, 138. 
Erskine, David M., British 

Minister, 113, 114. 
Expatriation, 322, 323. 
Exports, American, 263. 

Far East, the, American re- 
lations with, 331-33. 

Federal Convention, the, 68- 
75; reasons for, 68; mem- 
bership of, 68-70; changes 
organization of government, 

70-73- 
Federalists, organized, 89; in 
sympathy with British, 92; 



elect John Adams President, 
94; pass Alien and Sedition 
Acts, 95; downfall of, 96, 
152. 

Fillmore, Millard, succeeds 
to Presidency, 214. 

Finance, needs of the new 
government (1789), 77-80; 
results of neutral trade, 85, 
86; opposition to Hamil- 
ton's policy, 88. 

Fish, Prof. C. R., quoted, 263; 
on Richard Olney, 327. 

Fishing industry, importance 
of, 2, 3, 42. 

Flour, profits in, 85. 

Foreign relations of the United 
States, 80-86, 92-94, 140- 

45. 334, 335; . 

Forestry, Division of, estab- 
lished, 299. 

France, policy of, in America, 
29 ; result of the Seven Years' 
War, 30, 31; in the Ameri- 
can Revolution, 47, 48; an- 
nuls privileges to Ameri- 
cans, 66, 67; Revolution in, 
81, 82; "virtual warfare" 
with United States, 94; re- 
gains Louisiana, loi; and 
sells it to the United States, 
102, 103; tries to win Mex- 
ico (1863), 320. 

Franklin, Benjamin, influ- 
ence in France, 47. 

Free and equal, 147. 

Free silver movement, the, 
303-07. 

Freedom of the press, 95. 

Freedom of trade between the 
states, 261. 

Fremont, John C, first Re- 
publican candidate for Presi- 
dency, 221. 

French and Indian War, 30. 

French Revolution, American 
enthusiasm over, 81, 82. 

Frontier, significance of, 19- 
21, 135, 299. 



346 



INDEX 



Fugitive Slave Law, 216, 217. 
Fulton, Robert, and the Cler- 
mont, 136. 

Garfield, James A., President, 
283; assassinated, 289. 

Gengt," Citizen," French min- 
ister, 82. 

Geneva Tribunal, the, 323, 324. 

Gold, in the New World, 2; 
in California, 203, 204. 

Government, by contract, 43, 
44; compact theory of, 54; 
centralization of, 78, 99, 
104. 139, 318. 

Grandfather clauses, 244. 

Granger movement, the, 287, 
288. 

Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., elected 
President, 239; introduces 
Indian reservation policy, 
256. 

Great Britain, Catholic fast 
days reestablished in Eng- 
land, 2, 3; colony planting, 
4-6, 17, 18; colonial com- 
mercial policy, 22-28; strug- 
gle with France in America, 
28-31; new colonial policy 
adopted, 33; quarrel with 
the colonies, 35-40; retains 
military posts in Northwest, 
80; refuses to send minister 
to United States, 81; re- 
sents American neutral 
trade, 83; life-and-death 
struggle with Napoleon, 
105; attitude toward neu- 
tral trade, 106; wholesale 
blockade, 106, 107; violates 
American neutrality, 108; 
impresses seamen, 108-11; 
War of 1 81 2, 117-23; atti- 
tude in the Civil War, 227- 
29; arrest of naturalized 
American citizens, 322, 323; 
the Alabama claims, 323, 
324; the Venezuela bound- 
ary, 325, 326. 



Greeley, Horace, nominated 
for Presidency, 287. 

Hadley, Pres. Arthur T., cited, 
10, 160, 268, 269. 

Hamilton, Alexander, Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, 77; 
establishes credit of the 
United States, 78; teaches 
necessity for taxation, 79, 
80; opposition to, 88; Fed- 
eralist leader, 89. 

Hanna, Marcus A., 306. 

Harrison, Benjamin, Presi- 
dent, 283. 

Harrison, Gen. William Hen- 
ry, elected President, 197; 
death of, 198. 

Hartford Convention, the, 121, 
122. 

Hawaiian Islands, annexa- 
tion of, 330. 

Hay, John, on the friendliness 
of the British Government, 
329; and the open door pol- 
icy, 333- 

Hayes, Rutherford B., elected 
President, 243. 

Hayne, Robert Y., debate with 
Webster, 168. 

High cost of living (1857), 208. 

High finance, 307-10. 

Homestead Act, the, 251, 252. 

Hornaday, W. T., on the ex- 
termination of the bison, 

257. 
Horseshoe Bend, Battle of, 

119. 
Huguenots, French, 14. 
Humor, American, 162. 
Humphreys, Col. David, 128. 

Idealism, American, 296-98, 

Immigration, colonial, 12-15; 
checked by Revolution, 125; 
composition of, 162, 254, 
274. 275, 338; growth of, 
175, 203, 254, 255, 274, 275; 



347 



INDEX 



influence on politics, 293; 
Canadian, 300. 

Imperialism, 312. 

Impressment of seamen, 108- 
II. 

Indentured servants, 11. 

Indians, trouble with, 115, 
116, 130, 170 n.; Creeks 
defeated by Jackson, 119; 
Flatheads appeal for mis- 
sionaries, 194; lands en- 
croached on by whites, 255; 
reservations established, 
256; reservations broken 
up, 257, 298. 

Initiative and referendum, 3 1 5. 

Internal commerce, impor- 
tance of, 134-36. 

Interstate Commerce Com- 
mission, the, 313. 

Inventiveness, American, 205, 
206. 

Jackson, Gen. Andrew, at 
New Orleans, 119; popular 
favorite, 154, 155; chosen 
President, 156; Jacksonian 
democracy, 166; checks nul- 
lification movement, 169, 
170; opposed to United 
States Bank, 170, 171; 
"King Andrew," 197. 

Japan, American relations 
with, 332, 333, 337, 

Jefferson, Thomas, 44, 62; on 
the Confederation, 58, 59; 
Secretary of State, 77; 
leader of Democratic- Re- 
publican party, 90; elected 
President, 96; acquires 
Louisiana, 101-03; sup- 
presses Barbary pirates, 
104, 105; establishes em- 
bargo, III, 112. 

Johnson, Andrew, becomes 
President, 232 ; quarrels 
with Congress, 235, 237; 
unreasoningly pugnacious, 
236; impeached, 238. 



Joint-stock companies, for 
colonizing, 5; in develop- 
ment of industries, 206, 207, 
265. 

Judiciary, the federal, 73; 
and the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment, 269-72; popular elec- 
tion and recall, 316. 

Kansas, territory organized, 

216; struggle for, 218-21; 

state government set up by 

Southerners, 219. 
Kansas- Nebraska Act, the, 

215-17, 220. 
Keppler, Joseph, cartoonist, 

268. 
King George's War, 28. 
King William's War, 28. 
King, Ruf us, 70 ; quoted, 147, 

148. 
Knights of Labor, the, 273, 

274. 

Labor question, the, 272-75. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, quoted, 
157, 158. 

Land, attraction of, 9; full 
ownership of, 10; demand 
for, in the colonies, 19; im- 
portance of, in the West, 
59, 60, 167, 174; Ordinance 
of 1785,61,62; speculation 
in, 176-80; grants, 184, 185, 
253; end of free land, 298- 
300. 

Leopard, the, fires on the 
Chesapeake, no, in. 

Liberal Republicans, the, 286, 
287. 

Limited liability, in indus- 
trial development, 206, 207. 

Lincoln, Abraham, elected to 
Congress, 199; introduces 
"Spot Resolutions," 200; 
elected President, 221, 222; 
issues Emancipation Proc- 
lamation, 228; his great- 
ness, 229; assassinated, 232. 



348 



INDEX 



Livingston, Robert R., and 

Louisiana purchase, 102, 

103. 
Logan, James, quoted, 19. 
Loher, F"ranz, on American 

love of money, 161. 
"Lost Cause, The," 224, 
Louisiana, acquisition of, 100- 

04. 
Low, Seth, The Trend of the 

Century, quoted, 290. 
Lowell, James Russell, Biglow 

Papers, quoted, 202. 

Machine, the party, 277-79; 
growing opposition to, 289. 

Macy, Jesse, quoted, 282. 

Madison, James, on the right 
to tax, 37, 38; influence in 
Federal Convention, 69; po- 
litical affiliation, 90; elected 
President, 113; misled by 
Erskine, 113, 114; over- 
reached by Napoleon, 114; 
sends war message to Con- 
gress, 116; vetoes Erie 
Canal bill, 138. 

Mahan, Admiral A. T., on 
President Madison, 1 14, 1 15. 

Manifest destiny, 192-21 1. 

Manufacturing, growth of, 
127, 129, 262; interests of, 
opposed to planter interests, 
167; diversity of, 261-63. 

Marshall, Chief Justice John, 

139- 

Martineau, Harriet, Society in 
America, quoted, 182, 183. 

Mason and Dixon line, 132. 

Maximilian, Archduke, in 
Mexico, 320, 321. 

McKinley, William, elected 
President, 306; assassinated, 
311; action on the Philip- 
pines, 330, 331. 

McKinley Tariff Act, 304. 

McVey, Frank L., first his- 
torian of the Populist move- 
ment, 302, 303. 



Mennonites, Swiss, 14. 

Mexican War, the, 199-203. 

Mexico, Maximilian in, 320, 
321 ; war with, avoided, 336. 

Miranda, Francisco de, 141. 

Missionary enterprise in the 
Northwest, 194, 

Mississippi River, navigation 
and control of , 100, loi, 104. 

Missouri Compromise, the, 
133, 134. 212, 213; repeal 
proposed, 216; and Kansas, 
220. 

Molasses Act, the, 26, 27, 34. 

Monopolies, 267-69. 

Monroe, James, and Louisiana 
purchase, 102, 103; Presi- 
dent, 138, 152, 153. 

Monroe Doctrine, the, occa- 
sion for, 141, 142; expressed 
in message to Congress, 143, 
144; significance of, 144, 145, 
320; in Venezuela boundary 
case, 325-27; and the Span- 
ish American states, 336. 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 308. 

Morison, Samuel Eliot, 45. 

Morrill Act, the, 252. 

Morris, Gouverneur, 69. 

Multi-millionaires, 309, 310. 

Napoleon, sells Louisiana, 
101-03; master of the Conti- 
nent, 105; declares blockade 
of British Islands, 107; vio- 
lates American neutrality, 
108; approves Jefferson's 
embargo, 112; overreaches 
Madison, 114. 

Napoleon III, and Mexico, 
320, 321. 

Nation, the, on W. J. Bryan, 
306. 

National bank, proposed by 
Hamilton, 78; opposed, 88, 
89; attacked by Jackson, 

170,171,177. 
National Road, the Old, 98, 

99, 137- 



349 



INDEX 



Naturalization, 95, 109; and 
expatriation, 322, 323. 

Navigation Acts, 22, 23. 

Navy, American, in War of 
1812, 120, 121; fleet sent 
around the world, 337. 

Negro problem, the, 233-35, 
240, 242-46. 

Neutral rights, 105-11. 

Neutral trade, 83-86. 

Neutrality, under Washing- 
ton, 82, 83. 

New England, settlers, 8 ; ship- 
building in, 23; opposed 
War of 1812, 121, 122. 

New England Emigrant Aid 
Society, 218. 

Newfoundland fisheries, 2, 3. 

Newlands Act, the, 314. 

New South, the, 245-48; in- 
dustrialization of, 246; crea- 
tion of a middle class in, 
246, 247. 

New York Tribune, the, on 
W. J. Bryan, 305. 

Non-intercourse, 113, 114. 

Northwest Territory, the, 63, 
64; first division, 98, 99. 

Noyes, Alexander D., Forty 
Years of A merican Finance, 
quoted, 308, 309. 

Nullification, 167-70; checked 
by Jackson, 169; badges 
made in Massachusetts, 170. 

Nullification of laws by courts, 
271, 272. 

Ohio, becomes a State, 99. 
Ohio Company, the, 63. 
Ohio Valley, struggle for, 29, 

30. 
Olney, Richard, and the South 

American states, 327, 328. 
Ordinance of 1787, 63, 64, 132. 
Oregon, migration to, 193, 194, 

196; joint occupation of, 194, 

195; boundary settled, 198. 
Organized labor, 186, 187. 
Outdoor sports, 296. 



Packing industry, the, 267, 268. 

Panama Canal Zone, acquisi- 
tion of, 334. 

Panics: of 1837, the, 178, 179; 
effects of, 180-82, 195; of 
1857, the, 226, 227; of 1873, 
the, 264, 266, 273; of 1893, 
the, 304. 

Paper money, 178, 264; dur- 
ing the Revolution, 50; un- 
der the Confederation, 58. 

Party convention, the, 197. 

Party organization, 277-79; 
and the Australian ballot, 
292. 

Pendleton Act, the, 289. 

People's Party, the, 301-03; 
indorses free silver, 303, 304. 

Perceval, Spencer, British 
Prime Minister, assassi- 
nated, 118. 

Philippine Islands, acquisi- 
tion of, 330, 331. 

Pinchot, Gifford, 314. 

Pinckney, Gen. Charles Cotes- 
worth, 69, 70. 

Political parties, 86-88; Fed- 
eralists organized, 89; Dem- 
ocratic-Republicans, 90; op- 
position between, 91-96; 
development of the caucus, 
153. 154; National Repub- 
licans, 156; Whigs, 197, 198, 
214; Democrats, 156, 198, 
221, 222, 243, 306, 317; Re- 
publicans, 218, 221, 222, 
277, 282-84, 289, 317; Lib- 
eral Republicans, 286, 287; 
Populists, 300-03; Progres- 
sive, 317, 318. 

Polk, James K., elected Presi- 
dent, 198. 

Populist movement, the, 300- 
03; its demands, 301, 302; 
first historian of, 302, 303. 

Porto Rico, 330. 

Prairie farming, 259. 

Prairies, Western, occupation 
of, 174-76. 



350 



INDEX 



Preemption Act (1841), 184. 

President of United States, 
how chosen, 72; George 
Washington, 77; John 
Adams, 94; Thomas Jeffer- 
son, 96; James Madison, 
113; James Monroe, 138, 
152, 153; John Quincy 
Adams, 155; Andrew Jack- 
son, 156, 157; Martin Van 
Buren, 166, 197; William 
Henry Harrison, 197; John 
Tyler, 198; James K. Polk, 
198; Zachary Taylor, 214; 
Millard Fillmore, 214; 
Franklin Pierce, 217; James 
Buchanan, 221; Abraham 
Lincoln, 222, 228, 229, 230; 
Andrew Johnson, 232, 237, 
239; Ulysses S. Grant, 239; 
Rutherford B. Hayes, 243; 
James A. Garfield, 283; 
Chester A. Arthur, 283; 
Grover Cleveland, 283; 
Benjamin Harrison, 283; 
William McKinley, 306; 
Theodore Roosevelt, 311- 
14. 334; William Howard 
Taft, 315, 317; Woodrow 
Wilson, 317-19. 

Primaries, direct, 316. 

Prison reform, 190. 

Proclamation of 1763, the, 33, 

34- 
Professional politicians, 157- 

59- 

Profiteering, in the Revolu- 
tion, 50; in the Civil War, 
266. 

Progressive Party, the, 317, 
318. 

Property rights, in the Consti- 
tution, 75. 

Proprieties, colonial, 5, 6. 

Public improvements, 180, 
181, 184. 

Public lands, in the West, 59- 
62, 176-78; change in pol- 
icy, 182. 



Quebec Act, the, 42, 

Queen Anne's War, 28. 

Quincy, Josiah, quoted, 148, 
158. 

Quit rent, opposed by colo- 
nists, 10. 

Railroads, early, 172; opposi- 
tion to, 172, 173; growth of, 
173. 203, 204, 253; land 
grants, 185, 253; amalga- 
mation of, 268; in politics, 
285, 286; declared amen- 
able to state control, 288. 

Randolph, Gov. Edmund, 69. 

Randolph, John, quoted, 117. 

Reconstruction, after Civil 
War, 232-48; the negro 
problem, 233; the Thir- 
teenth Amendment, 234; 
quarrel of President and 
Congress, 235-39; the Four- 
teenth Amendment, 240, 
241; the Fifteenth Amend- 
ment, 242; amendments 
evaded, 244; a retarding 
factor in development of 
United States, 245. 

Refrigerator cars, importance 
of, 258. 

Religion, an incentive to colo- 
nization, 9. See also Church. 

Representation, not the same 
thing in America and in 
England, 36; and taxation, 

37, 38. 

Republican party, birth of, 
2 1 8 ; in election of 1 856, 22 1 ; 
elects Lincoln President, 
222; changed by Civil War, 
277; long period of ascend- 
ancy, 282-84; became the 
party of business interests, 
284; passes the Pendleton 
Act, 289; split in, 317. _ 

Revolution, the American, 
44-51; the work of a small 
class, 44, 45; won with the 
support of the French, 47, 



351 



INDEX 



48; some demoralizing ef- 
fects of, 50, 51; not very 
radical, 56. 

Rhodes, James Ford, History 
of the United States, cited, 
217. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 
^^$> 332; becomes Presi- 
dent, 311; leader of the re- 
formers, 31 1-13 ; wins sweep- 
ing victory (1904), 314; 
leader of the Progressive 
Party, 317; in foreign re- 
lations, 334; sends fleet 
around the world, 337. 

Russia, aggressiveness in Alas- 
ka, 142, 143; sells Alaska, 
321. 

Rutledge, John, 70. 

Salisbury, Lord, in the Vene- 
zuela case, 326, 327. 

San Domingo, 335. 

Schoepf, Dr., on racial admix- 
ture in the colonies, 13. 

Scotch-Irish, as immigrants, 

Scott, Gen. Winfield, Whig 
candidate for Presidency, 
217. 

Scrub race for the presidency, 
the, 154. 

Secession, 223, 224. 

Sectionalism, influence of, 135. 

Sedgwick, Ellery, on Mr. 
Roosevelt, 312. 

Senate, the, dominance of, 
279-82; courtesy of, 280; 
desirable abiding-place for 
bosses, 282; alliance with 
business, 291; popular elec- 
tion to, 315. 

Seward, VVilliam Henry, on 
the possession of Kansas, 
218; prevents French con- 
trol of Mexico, 321; ac- 
quires Alaska, 321. 

Sherman, Senator John, on 
Andrew Johnson, 236. 



Sherman Anti-Trust Law, the, 

Shipbuilding, in New Eng- 
land, 23. 

Slater, Samuel, introduces 
cotton machinery, 127. 

Slavery, in the colonies, ii; 
prohibited in Northwest 
Territory, 63, 132; importa- 
tion of slaves stopped, 125; 
changed attitude of the 
South, 130-32, 134; the 
Missouri Compromise, 133, 
134; market value of slaves, 
1 86 ; and the Civil War, 2 X 2- 
30; a moral issue, 212, 215; 
Emancipation Proclama- 
tion, 228. 

Smith, Capt. John, 7. 

Smith, Sydney, Letters on 
American Debts, 181. 

Smith, Theodore C, Parties 
and Slavery, cited, 227. 

Smithson, James, endows 
Smithsonian Institution, 
189. 

Snow, Capt. Isaac, quoted, 
81. 

South, the, leading crops in, 
130; slavery in, 130-33; 
importance of internal com- 
merce, 134, 135; nullifica- 
tion movement in, 167- 
'70; reconstruction and ad- 
justment after the Civil 
War, 232-48; industrializa- 
tion of, 245, 246; creation 
of a middle class in, 246, 
247. 

South Carolina, secedes, 223. 

Spain, establishes colonies in 
America, 2; aids Americans 
against British, 47, 48; 
seeks to control Mississippi 
Valley, 49, 80; closes ports 
to Americans, 66, 67; yields 
on all points at issue, 93; 
unfriendly on Mississippi 
River navigation, 100; re- 



352 



INDEX 



volt of Central and South 

American colonies, 141, 142; 

war with, 328, 329. 
Speculation, inland, 177-82. 
Spoils system, the, 157. 
Spot Resolutions, the, 200. 
Squatters, 183, 184. 
Stamp Act, the, 35-37, 41. 
Stanton, Secretary Edwin 

M., refuses to resign, 238. 
State banks, 177, 178. 
State constitutions, 53-56, 

149-51- 

State debts, assumption by 
Federal Government, 78, 
88; increase of, 180, 181. 

States, new, formation of, 62, 
64, 65. 

Steamboat, importance of, 
136. 

Steel industry, the, 308, 309. 

Stephen, James, War in Dis- 
guise, 106. 

Stirling, James, Letters from 
the Slave States (1856), 
quoted, 175. 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher, Un- 
cle Tom's Cabin, 216. 

Sugar Act, the, 34, 35. 

Sumner, William Graham, 
cited, 147. 

Taft, William Howard, quoted, 
310; elected President, 315. 

Tariff, 78; first protective, 129; 
increasing duties, 1 67 ; com- 
promise (1833), 169, 170; 
stimulant to manufactur- 
ing, 263, 264; power of the 
Senate, 291 ; McKinley Act 
(1890), 304. 

Taxation, without representa- 
tion, 36-38; American ob- 
jection to any taxation, 51, 

79. 
Taylor, Gen. Zachary, elected 

President, 214. 
Tea, tax on, 41, 42. 
Tenure of Office Act, the, 238. 



Texas, under Spain, 192; an- 
nexation of, 193, 199. 

Third-party movements, 286, 
.317. 

Tilden, Samuel J., candidate 
for Presidency, 243. 

Tillman, Senator Benjamin 
R., 243, 244. 

Tobacco, commercial value of, 

7. 

Townships, 61. 

Trafalgar, Nelson's victory 
at, 105. 

Treat, Prof. Payson J., 186 «. 

Treaty of Ghent, the, 122, 123. 

Treaty of Washington (1871), 
323- 

Trusts, 307-11, 313; good and 
bad, 314. 

Turner, Frederick J., The Sig- 
nificatice of the Frontier in 
American History, cited, 19, 
20; on the frontier and the 
section, 135; on the ideal- 
ism of the Western man, 
164; on conservation, 299. 

Tweed Ring scandals, the, 286. 

Tyler, John, becomes Presi- 
dent, 197, 198. 

Union Pacific Railroad, 252, 

2.57- 
United States, the, beginnings 
of government, 53; Articles 
of Confederation, 57, 70; 
Congress the central organ 
of government, 57, 58; pub- 
lic lands, 59-61, 176-78; 
colonization of the West, 
62-65; evolution of states, 
64, 65; foreign trade, 66-68; 
attempts to amend Articles 
of Confederation, 67, 68; 
Federal Convention, 68-75; 
composition and powers of 
Congress, 70, 71 ; the execu- 
tive, 71-73; financial needs 
of the new Government, 77- 
80; foreign relations after 



353 



INDEX 



establishment of peace, 80, 

81; neutrality of, 82, 83; 
profits by neutral trade, 83- 
86; rise of political parties, 
86-91; division of feeling 
on foreign relations, 92-94; 
"virtual warfare" with 
France, 93, 94; growth of 
liberal government, 95, 96, 
98-123; admission of Ohio, 
99 ; Louisiana purchase, lOO- 
04; war with Tripoli, 104, 
105; neutral rights violated 
by British and French, 105- 
08; impressment, 108-11; 
ports closed to British war 
vessels, 11 1; Jefferson's em- 
bargo, III, 112; Madison's 
mistakes, 11 3-1 5; War of 
1812, 117-23. 

Change in the people, 125; 
the westward movement, 
126, 127, 174-76, 203; in- 
crease in manufacturing, 
127-29, 261-67; relation of 
cotton-growing and slavery, 
130-32; the Missouri Com- 
promise, 133, 134; internal 
commerce, 134, 135; water 
transportation, 136; the 
Erie Canal, 137, 138; new 
vigor in foreign relations, 
140; the Monroe Doctrine, 
141-45; religious changes, 

146, 147; leveling forces, 

147, 148; increasing force 
of S democracy, 148-53; in- 
fluence of Andrew Jackson, 
154-57; the spoils system, 
157-59; American traits, 
160-64; the Jacksonian era, 
166-91; nullification move- 
ment, 167-70; controversy 
over United States Bank, 
170, 171; early railroading, 
171-73; land speculation, 
177, 178; Panic of 1837,178- 
82; squatters, 183, 184; in- 
ternal improvements, 184, 



185; organized labor, 186- 
88; intellectual awakening, 

188, 189; an era of reform, 

189, 190; annexation of 
Texas, 192, 193, 199; the 
Oregon country, 193-98; the 
Mexican War, 199-203; in- 
crease in area, 203; indus- 
trial development, 204-08; 
American inventiveness, 
205, 206; political and so- 
cial reforms, 209-11. 

Slavery and the Civil 
War, 212-30; Compromise 
of 1850, 214, 215; Kansas- 
Nebraska Act, 215-17; 
Kansas struggle, 218-20; 
industrial dependence of 
the South on the North, 
220, 22 1 ; election of Lincoln, 
221, 222; the Civil War, 
223-30; reconstruction and 
adjustment, 232-48; the 
negro problem, 233-35; i"^" 
peachment of Andrew John- 
son, 237-39; growth of the 
West, 250-59; Indian res- 
ervations, 256, 257; cattle- 
ranching, 257, 258; prairie 
farming, 259; leading man- 
ufacturing nation of the 
world, 263; corporations re- 
place partnerships, 265; mo- 
nopolies, 268; application 
of Fourteenth Amendment, 
269-72; labor question, 272- 
74; business and politics, 
277-93; the party machine, 
277; the boss system, 278, 
291; corruption of law- 
makers, 284; Civil Service 
Reform, 288; the Austra- 
lian ballot, 292; the second 
generation after the Civil 
War, 295-319; idealism, 
296-98; the Populist move- 
ment, 300-03; free silver 
agitation, 303-07; high 
finance, 307-10; the new 



354 



INDEX 



era, 310-19; a world power, 
320-40 ; the French in Mex- 
ico, 320; Alaska, 321; the 
naturalization problem, 322 ; 
the Alabama claims, 323; 
Venezuela, 325; the Spanish 
War, 328; relations with the 
Orient, 332; peace-keeping, 
335; in the Great War, 336- 
40. 

Van Buren, Martin, joins the 
Jackson forces, 156; admin- 
istration of, 166, 197. 

Venezuela, 334 ; boundary dis- 
pute, 325-27. 

Vermont, an independent 
state, 62. 

Virginia, settlers, 4, 8; tobacco 
growing in, 7. 

Wade, Senator Benjamin F., 
217. 

Waite, Chief Justice Morrison 
R., on Fourteenth Amend- 
ment, 270. 

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 
on American immigration, 
162; on the value of slaves 
in the United States, 185, 
186. 

War of 1812, the, 117-23; a 
misfortune for both bellig- 
erents, 117; might have 
been avoided, 117; purpose 
of, 118; movements on land, 
118, 119; on the sea, 120, 
121; opposition in the 
United States, 121, 122; 
unfortunate ending, 122, 
123; turning-point in his- 
tory, 125; "second war of 
independence," 139, 140. 

Wars: King William's, Queen 
Anne's, and King George's, 
28; Seven Years, result of 
30, 31; with Tripoli, 104, 
105; of 1812, 117-23; Mexi- 
can, 199-203; Civil, 223-30; 



Spanish, 328, 329; the Great 
War, 336-40. 

Washington, George, com- 
mander-in-chief, 45; a great 
leader, 45, 46; President of 
Federal Convention, 69; 
first President of United 
States, 77; proclaims neu- 
trality, 82; a Federalist, 90; 
death of, 96. 

Watson, John F., quoted, 209. 

Wealth, prized as the emblem 
of success, 161; more equal 
distribution asked for, 187; 
an object in itself, 267; 
sought more for what it 
represents,? 309; concentra- 
tion of, 310, 311; attempts 
to weaken the power of, 

313- 
Webster, Daniel, debate with 

Hayne, 16S. 

West, the, growth of, 126, 127, 
204, 250-59; needs water- 
way to the East, 136, 137; 
influence of, 140, 149, 159, 
160; favors liberal land pol- 
icy, 167, 176, 177; unfore- 
seen influence of the Civil 
War, 251-53; cowboy a 
synonym for, 258; over-de- 
velopment of, 264; Granger 
movement in, 287, 288; the 
Populist movement, 300-03; 
the free silver movement, 
303-07. 

West Indies, trade importance 
of, 25, 26, 66, 85. 

Western lands, and Congress, 

59-63. . . 

Whig party, begmmngof, 197; 
elects William Henry Har- 
rison President, 197; nomi- 
nates Henry Clay, 198; 
death of, 216, 217. 

Whiskey Insurrection, 80. 

White House, the, burned by 
British, 119. 

Whitney, Eli, inventor of cot- 



355 



INDEX 



ton gin, 127, 130; and fire- 
arms, 206. 

William III, 28. 

Wilmot Proviso, the, 212. 

Wilson, James, 69. 

Wilson, Woodrow, epigram on 
Jackson, 171; Division and 
Reunion, quoted, 222 ; 



elected President, 317, 318; 
legislative achievement of 
his first term, 318, 319; 
keeps peace with Mexico, 
336; in the Great War, 336, 

337. 
Woolen manufactures, 128. 
Wrong, G. M., cited, 152 n. 



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